


Marshal's Dilemma

by Makhsi



Category: New World Magischola (Live-Action Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, NWM2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 06:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Makhsi/pseuds/Makhsi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professor Sam Cantwil has been an investigative Marshal in Thunderbird Province for seven years, and now returns to their alma mater, New World Magischola, as a professor of mind magic. It's not as easy or restorative as Sam hoped it would be. The professor carries psychological scars, guilt and shame, dark secrets, and deep insecurities... and the faculty are suspicious of Sam's connection to the recently arrested former mind magic professor, Quincy Quintillian. </p><p>An in-character narrative summary of the New World Magischola LARP experience from the point of view of S. Cantwil in NWM2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Interview

**Author's Note:**

> This work is unpolished and not in a narrative order I'd choose if I were writing a story from scratch. It's a retelling of a live-action roleplaying experience and thus the story is as it actually happened, as best I can remember. It jumps around from time to time and there are interruptions in the narrative flow due to the nature of the game.

There's an opening at New World Magischola. They need a Mind Magic professor; my own mentor has left the position after so many years, but his message that there'd be an opening and I ought to apply was an escape hatch. It’s a way out of Thunderbird Province, out of the Marshals.

I remember Magischola, the warmth of my fellow Bears in Maison du Bois, the happy chaos of student life. I remember brightness and hope. 

And – seven years in the field, nearly eight. I can bring that experience back to the classroom. I can prepare them better than I was prepared. Warn them. Weed out the ones who can't make it. 

(The ones like me.)

It's strange to walk the campus grounds again. Everything is the same and everything is different. _ (I am different.)  _ The tall carved doors of the faculty lounge stand before me, and I've only been here once before, as a skittish yet promising student, Quincy Quintillian's protege in Mind Breaking techniques. Now I am a battered Marshal ( _ former _ Marshal, badgeless, who even am I now without the silver shining on my chest) and… I should be confident. Should be bold and fearless.

I am terrified.

I pull myself together, push the clamoring of  _ failure, weak, not enough, couldn't cut it, not acceptable, disappointment, weak weak weak _ down into a hole in my mind (deal with that later, later). I square my shoulders, straighten my medallion-adorned coat (a memento, not ready to let the past go entirely), lift my chin. 

Confident. Capable. Strong. (You can do this, Sam.)

I push the doors open and step inside to the full faculty room, so many faces. A ring of tables and chairs like a courtroom. I’m to stand in the center of it all. Surrounded. Exposed. (Don’t shrink. Stand square. Breathe.)

"Why New World Magischola?"

That first single question from the stern-faced Chancellor (I remember him, though he was younger before, and was he ever so fierce and intimidating as he is now, in long black robes like a bird of ill omen?), the faculty all around with measured observing stares (some half-remembered, some never known, and since when was my investigation mentor Suddath a faculty member, oh gods he's going to be so disappointed, I can't let him know, smile briefly and look away, just pretend he isn't there...), I am surrounded and the old paranoia creeps up my spine, and I am cracking.

Lock your knees. Clench your teeth. It's just like in the field when they try to get to you. Don't let it happen. 

(But this is not an enemy. I am home again.  _ This was home _ . Wasn't it?) 

( _ They aren't going to want you if they know.. _ .) 

"Ah, well," oh, I sound nervous, can't you put more strength in your voice, can't you even maintain eye contact you weak failure of a thing, "I spent seven years in Thunderbird as a Marshal and -- thought it was time for a change." That doesn't sound bad. Seven years is a career, isn't it? That doesn't sound like you couldn't cut it in the field. "I think my field experience will be useful as a professor."

His face is impassive. I feel the cracks inside get wider. There were rumors, weren't there, of him being able to see into a person's mind without so much as a spell...? I strengthen my mind's shields, just in case. 

"Why leave the field, Marshal?" he asks.

I falter. I can't meet his gaze. (Does he know?) "I..." There are bands of anxiety tightening around my chest. A dozen thoughts flaring through my nervous system. The burn of a murderer's mind, the terror of a witness and victim re-experienced, the guilt the shame the mistakes, the husk of a soul I touched after Avernus  _ (my fault my fault my fault)–– _

"I just... I needed a... a break from the field." Something about that penetrating gaze demands honesty.  _ (They aren't going to want you. You will never go home.) _ "I thought..." A breath, pull it together, they're all staring, you are floundering! "I was ill-prepared for the realities of the field. I want to better prepare the students on the Path of the Marshal." 

The chancellor draws in a deep, measured breath; he seems to grow in size, eyes closing, his entire mien intensifying. His hands clench the table and he stands, slowly, slowly.

(Oh gods. I said the wrong thing. I gave dire insult. Of course they think they prepared the students just fine. I shouldn't have said that. But I was ill-prepared, I was... I was idealistic and filled with heroism, thoughts of making the world better, of being one of the good Marshals. Always Just.)

_ (There are no good Marshals.) _

He leans over the table, towering over me (was he always this tall and broad?). His voice has gone deep and gravelly like the moving of the very earth. His stare beneath furrowed brows lays my soul bare. 

"I was there," he says, and it's so unexpected and so raw that I am rocked physically off balance, a wave of feeling coursing through my body like a tidal wave. "I served in Thunderbird, during the Vampire Wars. I know what it's like." He holds my gaze and gives a measured, acknowledging nod. 

I return it, shaken, resisting the urge to salute.

He sits back down, the Marshal presence and earth-power settling back under his skin until he seems once more the size of a normal wizard. His presence lightens, and I can breathe again. He gives a thumbs up and casts his glance around the table of faculty. "Votes?"

I can't take in the moment. I am rocked to my core and I can't even center myself enough to see who says yea or nay. The world around me has fuzzed to white noise and I am shaking.

It was enough.

"Welcome to New World Magischola, Professor," the Chancellor says, a hint of that former gravity returning as he meets my eyes once more.

I sit, meeting no one's gaze, trying to stop trembling.


	2. Thursday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Professor Sam Cantwil's experience at New World Magischola (run 2), day 1 (Thursday), semester 1.

It is the first day of Magischola, and I am reeling.

They said in the faculty meeting that Quintillion is in Avernus.  _ Avernus _ . (And there are rumors of his escape! And of him being sighted at the high-security Unsoiled-heavy province, Virginia Isle floating invisible in the sky.) He was my mentor and I trusted him and there must be some mistake––did he really blackmail and tamper with people's’ minds, students and faculty alike?? He was the closest to a father I had since the Cinnabar Society took me away from the mundane farm of my childhood and...

And all the faculty seem to eye me with suspicion, mistrust, and I still don't belong. (Suddath, too, scowling over his mess of a mustache. And he doesn't yet know about… about… no, don’t think about that right now.)

I can't believe it of Professor Quintillion, I can't. I made mistakes too, I drew the wrong conclusions once. Surely...? 

(the ground is shattering beneath me)

...

It is the first dinner of the school year and the world is spinning.

They are all so fresh-faced and young. Their world is this: magic and wonder, the little dramas of house rivalries and student romance, classes and dreams of the future. I keep seeing the shadows of myself and my friends (all scattered, some dead, some changed beyond recognition), our idealistic passion. The shouted slogans of the houses. “We are Just.” “Change the World.” Optimism. Fervor. Hope.

(We were foolish and ignorant. And we were unprepared.)

The Chancellor is speechifying, listing a number of rules and changes, and then––oh. First I am stunned and then my blood is boiling. 

"Live, enjoy this time, be bold." 

He's encouraging  _ idealism.  _ Fanning the flames of hope, boldness instead of caution. How can he do that? Confusion roils in me, and outrage. He knows. He KNOWS. He said he's been there in the turmoil of the field and the scars of a shadow-war. What is he doing??

The burning beneath my skin feels something like betrayal.   
…

I walk the evening grounds and I am lost.

Everything is the same and everything is different. I can't find where to go. I keep losing my way. (I have lost myself.) The students swirl by in laughter and robes and they are home. This was my home once.

(You can never go home again.)

I am rootless and dizzy. The tattooed compass of my former house, Maison du Bois gives no direction; it's a mockery on my inner forearm, faded with my convictions. I am disconnected. I am groundless. I wanted to come home and this is no longer a home for such as me, it's moved on without me, or else it stayed in place while I shattered beyond recognition, and I do not belong.

(You can never go home again.)

There is the Chancellor, there above the Square of the Lion. I burn and boil again, all betrayal, all rage. I have enough composure to stand beside him and keep my voice down for appearances _ (I can be at least professional, still)  _ but my voice is all intensity. I barely even notice Suddath walking up to us.

"How could you tell them that? You know what it's like out there! Why are you encouraging their idealism?" I am angry and I am hurting and my ragged heart is crying ‘why, why, why’. (I was not prepared. I was not protected. At least don't do the same to them.)

"Because now they are young, and anything is possible. Let them enjoy that while they can here in Magischola. The real world will confront them soon enough."

A thousand retorts collide in my throat and I swallow them down. 

...

I sit with my back against a wall, sharing Suddath's vilely soothing flask, and I am drowning.

A scarred, visored Marshal with the silver badge of Destiny Province gleaming on his chest stalks up, bulldog-like, all posturing and looming. He demands answers from the Chancellor; he stands uphill as the Chancellor leans against the wall, seemingly unperturbed; he growls his demands and his threats.

Something clenches beneath my sternum, a kind of dark envy at the shining of the badge. I am keenly aware of the lack of it on my own breast. It is some strange melange of loss, jealousy, and shame.

Yet there is also a remembered pride. This blustering interrogation is an insult to my former path as an investigator. I rise, my mouth is twisted into scoffing, my be-glittered brows rise into my hair. "Marshal, how long have you been in the field?"

He is insulted; spine stiffening, mouth firming, scarred face swiveling my way. "Over twenty years," he snaps, and I can't shake the image of an aggressive, ill-trained dog lunging on its leash. 

"Huh." I know my face is the picture of skepticism. Destiny Province must have poorer standards than Thunderbird. I lean against the wall and disengage. He may be longer in the field, but I know I am better at investigation; his behavior is a mockery and a sham. Maybe there's less to deal with in southeastern Destiny. It's more well-settled and less wild than the rugged northwest province I worked at, after all. 

Chancellor Fortinbras glances at me. "This is Marshal Hayes," he says, a meaning in his gaze and a weight in the introduction.

Oh. 

_ Oh. _

My student's father, Magdalena’s father. The vampire attacks that set off the Vampire Wars so long ago. A deceased mother, a wounded father. It falls together for me in a moment. I nod and watch without further comment. 

Marshal Hayes stalks off at last. I comment on his ineptitude at investigation; the Chancellor swigs from the flask and notes that he works in security. Ah, well then. My professional pride still prickles but that's less insulting.

…

"Lot of bad Marshals in the world," I say.

"You're one of the good 'uns," Suddath drawls, chewing on one of the endless wheat-grass toothpicks that sometimes doubles as a wand.

I fold in on myself. He doesn't know. He has no idea. Would he have anything to do with me if he knew? He was an important part of the Investigator I became, he taught me observation and all the ways it could go wrong, and I still fucked it up. (He'd be so disappointed.) I still crave his approval and the companionship I remember and the care I once felt and I don't deserve any of it.

I can only shake my head in silence.

Suddath passes the flask around again and the Chancellor takes a long swallow. "We do our job, Marshal. We did what we had to."

(It wasn't enough. It was too much.)

The weight of my failures drowns me. I drown it out in turn in the taste of herbal liquor and its battery-acid aftertaste.

(I am lost.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this won't necessarily read as a complete story or necessarily make a ton of sense to people who weren't at NWM. Hopefully it is at least somewhat readable.


	3. Friday: Classes

It is too, too early for the first day of classes. I stumble through my morning routine, glamourie spells and unguents, breakfast, caffeine. "Ritual of Awakening," I say, only half joking. Thunderbird Province is two to three hours later than Destiny Province and so 7am is more like 5am to my unadjusted biological clock. No tempus magic will fix this problem except the mundane passage of time. 

And at the same time this bleary morning feels like hope. The ghosts of yesterday and my time as a student are gone with the night, quiescent at least, for now. I step into my role of professor and the ground is firm beneath me; I feel more at ease. 

(Maybe I can do this.)

I talk a little too much and fumble over my first lecture, stumbling on the spell to reveal surface thoughts for the student check-in, but I manage to pull it together. The vulnerability exercises go well, and the first class of students are willing participants in enhancing their connections with magic, prying into each other’s hearts with a deep-spiraling repeated question. 

“Who are you? Not just that. Who  _ are  _ you?” Again and again until there is nothing but silence or tears or staring into the void of themselves.

This might be okay. This professor gig isn't bad at all.

The second class is drowsier in the heat, a bit resistant to connection and vulnerability, a bit quieter. With a couple exceptions, though, they do try. 

It’s easy to tell the Marshals and Astromancers apart in these two classes: one class is second year Marshals and first year Astromancers, while the other class is second year Astromancers and first year Marshals. Colorful neckties mark the second years who already have their houses. Even so, I am not as sharp with the Marshals as I expected I’d be. I’ll need to step up my game. 

(No one else will prepare them.) 

At least the initiation is tonight, and I’ve told all the students on the Path of the Marshal in my classes to be there. Professor Styles seems to have the same view of things as I; we’ll break them in together. (Something ripples inside of me at the thought, an uneasiness. I steel myself. It is what must be done.)

The first year Astromancers are buzzing about some shared vision of Virginia Isle falling in fire from student rituals; they ask me about it and I can’t help but laugh. “Veteran Marshals can’t make it onto the island and you think student magic will bring it down? Someone’s playing a prank on you all.” Professor Ziegler had shown up in the faculty lounge panicking about the first year Astromancers’ vision earlier. We all laughed at him then, too. I know a prank when I see one; I was a consummate prankster back in primaschola, after all! If it’s not the first years pulling something on the gullible Divinations professor, it’s the third years using Mind Magic to project a vision onto the first years. Not very kind of them, as they seemed particularly rattled by the vision, but unsurprising.

Astromancers are adorable. I have a soft spot for them; it’s not like they’re going to be in danger or burnout for anything. No field work for them, just divinations and quiet little rituals. I’m maybe overly indulgent with the dears. Perhaps I can convince the more tender-hearted Marshals to go switch to a low-stress path like Astromancy, or something straightforward and uncomplicated like Cryptozoology.

There are several hours between my classes, now. First, second, and sixth block. I wander the courtyard and chat with students. I probe inside myself for that yawning void of homelessness, directionlessness, protectiveness; it’s quiet, still. (Maybe this will be okay.)

I realize that, without conscious effort, I’ve been keeping an eye out for the Chancellor and for Suddath. There’s the Chancellor now, chatting with a couple Dan Obeah students on the green… and yet something’s not right. His robes are gone, there’s a green Dan Obeah tie around his head, his posture is all different. 

My senses sharpen, my focus narrows. I remember the scattered uncentered mind of the Chancellor from last night, his struggle to maintain focus with the disruption of time across the school’s ley lines, too immersed into the school itself to disentangle to the Now. He had shared with me that the timelines were bubbling, disrupted, the past bleeding into the present. He said he might forget himself, and need reminders of who he was. Could this be a symptom?

“Students,” I say, nodding to the two Dan Obeah members. “Fortinbras,” I say, cautiously. 

He stares me up and down, weaving a bit on his feet. (Is he drunk? Or is this how he carries himself when he is young or when he thinks he is young? Certainly he  _ looks _ decades younger.) “Heyyy,” he says, drawn out and overly familiar.

“Dan Obeah…” I look at his tie, then at the two students with inquiry. The dark-haired one is Bee, one of my Astromancy students; who is the other one? 

“He’s a third year, Path of the Marshal,” Bee supplies, helpful as always. That’s part of how she earned the line of yellow “1” house point pins down her bright green Dan Obeah tie. She glances over at Fortinbras. “This is Professor Cantwil, they teach mind magic.”

“Duuude,” Fortinbras (Fortinbro?) says, eyeing me up and down again, not even trying to be subtle about it. “No way. You’re way too hot to be a prof.” 

I blink. How do you even respond to that? “I assure you I am,” I say. I lean over to talk to Bee, sotto-voice. “Is that the Chancellor thinking he’s a third year, or is it actual third year Fortinbras from a time-slip?”

Neither of the Dan Obeah students have any idea. Well, I’d just taught my Mind Magic students about grounding; maybe I could help ground him into the here-and-now if it was the Chancellor lost in the warping threads of time. “How old are you, student?” 

“Plenty old enough!” He looks at me over his shades in a parody of flirtation. Well, it seems like a parody, exaggerated; I think he is just trying too hard. “Seventeen,” he responds at last, when I remain stone-faced and waiting. 

“And what year is it?” Basic, simple questions. Bring him back to the present or else find out when he thinks it is. 

He looks around incredulously. “Pfff! What kinda question is that? You crazy?”

I put on my best Professorial air of authority. Well, perhaps it’s more like a Marshal air of authority and no-nonsense expectation of an answer and respect, but that can be the same thing, right? It translates, I think. “Student. Answer the question or I start docking points from your house.”

The two present-day students erupt in a flurry of anxiety. “Oh please please no, just tell them, c’mon Fortinbras,  _ please!” _

He rolls his eyes, demurs a bit, rambles through a list of 80’s hair bands, and finally says, “Well, because my housemates asked… It’s 1988.”

I begin to think this is time-displaced young Fortinbras rather than a confused Chancellor. “Thank you, student.” A trickle of my long-lost adolescent mischief and never-lost curiosity tickles the back of my mind. “What was your name again, student?” Solving the mystery of the Chancellor’s first name was a campus-wide obsession.

He grins, completely unfooled. “Y’can just call me ‘O’,” he says with a wink.

Sigh. I shake my head as he decides I’m not going to respond to his horribly over-the-top flirtations and wanders off towards the dorms. I nudge a lanky Du Bois student lounging on the grass with a book. “Can you follow him, bear? Keep an eye on him? I think that’s a time-displaced Fortinbras.” And to the two Dan Obeah students, “If you don’t have classes right now, anything you can do to get him back to his time…?” They nod and scurry off.

Well. Typical life at a magical university, I suppose.

“Professor Cantwil.” A couple professors - Wallace the Runic professor and Kane the Ethics professor, I think, though I’m still matching names to faces - call me over. They'd found a note passed between two students, talking about how the students don’t trust mind magic, I’m not to be trusted because of my mentor Quintillian, and I need to be watched; people shouldn’t be alone with me. 

My hopeful mood sours. I stuff the note in my bag. “Students,” I say, by way of explanation and dismissal. “Gossipy brats.” Fuck. Quintillian couldn’t have been bad. Could he? Was he even in his right mind at the time? I trust him. (Trusted? Present tense or past tense?) I… “It’s nothing.” The professors look at me. I can’t read if it’s suspicion or concern or distaste. I’m too shielded nowadays, habit from all the time in the field. 

I walk away.

Lunch comes and goes; the Chancellor attends and is confused by the mention of his younger self. Not him, then, but a time-displaced Fortinbras. (Fortinbro, everyone’s calling young Fortinbras, to differentiate from the Chancellor. It fits amusingly well.) 

I manage to track down a couple third-year Astromancers right after lunch on a free period. They’re finishing up a vision with Fortinbro (still around, apparently, his tie wrapped askance around his forehead) who staggers off after expressing stunned gratitude for what he’s seen. I sit with the Astromancers and hear about their work with the young Chancellor-to-be, helping him see the change and good he could make, the potential he has, the way things can be different from the authoritarian Magischola he attends in the 1980’s. As we watch, he settles his tie around his neck, and the exaggerated cocky posturing begins to fade from his bearing. He talks quietly with some other students, something a bit tender and raw in the way he stands. 

Hmm.

I ask the Astromancers to volunteer. Sedona is one, and… I don’t remember the other’s name, she’s dressed in froth and frills. I tell them that I need to tamper with their minds for the third-year Mind Magic exercise; I’m wanting people to try to identify whose mind has been tampered with during their vulnerability exercise. They agree, I adjust a memory here, a personality trait here, and remove the memory of the tampering; the frilly Astromancer goes off to change into more pragmatic, comfortable clothing as a result of the personality adjustment.

Suddath is in the faculty lounge when I walk in to update points. I’m feeling better again, and the sight of Suddath tosses some upheaval into my calm. I don’t know how to approach him, how to interact with him. The guilt trickles in again, and the shame, and also the desire for approval, for the connection we once had. I think he feels that connection still; he turns towards me and seems at ease. 

(I am always, always aware of where he is whenever we are in the same vicinity. My senses continuously scan for the signature of him, one of the few people I know here anymore.)

We banter, a bit. (I ache with it. I want this friendship. And yet it’s false, isn’t it? Because if he knew…) He offers to teach my class. I think it’d be funny for this janitorially-dressed Forensics professor to pretend to be the substitute for my third-years; will they be confused, aghast…? We agree it’ll be entertaining. I’ll walk in late.

It’s not as entertaining as I hoped; he had them read the syllabus and Sedona was suggesting an exercise when I walk in. I thank Suddath; he asks to stay and observe. I hesitate (fear of judgment? of not measuring up?) but say that’s fine. The class goes all right, though this group asks a lot more questions and challenges a lot more; third years are certainly a different experience than the more timid first and second years! I lecture a bit on safety, confidentiality, the importance of knowing yourself, how easily perception is tainted, how this can manifest (badly) for both mind-healing Astromancers, divining Astromancers, and (with a stern look to the Marshals in the group and a sharper tone in my voice) Marshals of all sorts.

(Don’t make my mistakes.)

(Get out while you still can.) 

They pair off and scatter to do their vulnerability-and-connection exercise, and I lean against the wall next to Suddath.

“Yer one of the good ‘uns,” he says again, firmly, with a penetrating look. (He’s not empathic, is he? Telepathic? Sometimes I wonder.) 

I shake my head. “There are no good Marshals.” 

“Cantwil,” and he leans forward, as if he can penetrate the defense of my hunched shoulders and the guilt of my bowed head with his furrowed stare, “I know you are.”

“You don’t know—"

He harrumphs, shaking his head. "Without you, ya think i'd give two spits about what these kids are up to or why? But 'cause of you," his mustache twitches, "I at least give half a spit."

I draw in a breath, chewing on that. I am torn and I am half-ready to confess. "I..."

There’s a scream to our right.

I am up in an instant, hand to my wand, the whole room going crystalline clear, my mind questing out. A student is doubled over, cursing. The Astromancer paired with them, a pale-haired Calisayla student with a thick Southern accent, hovers uncertainly. “You ain’t bad, you ain’t!” she says, pleadingly, while the darker-haired student yells guilt and self-hate, gripping at their own arms with bruising fingers.

“What happened?” I ask, curt and sharp as I examine the distressed student.

“I don’t rightly know, she just started yellin’ about hatin’ herself,” said the other. 

I talk the student through it, telling them to breathe slow, feel their feet, asking them to notice three things about the room, taking them through grounding exercises to bring them to the here-and-now. They settle and calm, their fingers unclench. They look up through long strands of dark hair, blank-faced.

“I’m okay now,” the student says, dull-voiced. 

Hmm. Looks like I should have started with grounding exercises rather than left them as an afterthought for the end of class. The exercise time is up anyway; I call the class together and review grounding techniques, ask them how the exercise went, explain the value and use and application of grounding.

Suddath slips out partway through. My gaze follows him and there’s a sinking in my chest, a hollow ache. (There was a moment there, where I almost was able to explain, and I thought perhaps he wouldn’t hate me for the mistakes I’ve made, and— it’s gone now, a burst soap bubble of a fragile moment.) 

We keep missing one another. Is that just chance, or am I avoiding him? (Maybe both.)

Class ends. No one had divined who had been mentally tampered with; I reverse my Mind Magic with a curt word and a wave of my wand, and the frilly Astromancer looks aghast at her practical clothing.

I head to the faculty lounge for the 4pm meeting, and the blown-glass fragility of the day’s hope shatters with a letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The vulnerability exercise referenced is one I got from my graduate counseling psychology program, called "Who Are You? / Not Just That". 
> 
> The


	4. Friday: Faculty Meeting

The faculty meeting begins quietly enough. I encounter Professor Wallace on the way in; the normally-gregarious, preening Runic professor is walking as if in a dream, a stunned look on his face beneath his broad-brimmed explorer’s hat. "Are you okay?" I ask.

"I... I just found out I'm a father," he says. "There was a woman–– you know the twins with the white hair? They... they're my children." He opens the door to the faculty lounge and walks in, trance-like.

"Congratulations?" I offer, uncertain. He nods in acceptance; ah, it's a good thing then, just world-upturning.

Several of the professors are already seated. Chancellor Fortinbras can't make it but a time-displaced previous chancellor is there from decades and decades ago, 1898 I think, opulently dressed and full of superiority. (I don't trust her.) Professor Contreras, as the senior-most faculty and the Chancellor's right-hand professor, runs the meeting, announcing the presence of the former Chancellor with his usual perfunctory scowl. 

There's a brief interruption as Professor Wallace hacks into his handkerchief; it comes away bloody. We stare; he explains, between coughs, that he'd contracted something from a tomb in one of his adventures. Hasn't found a cure yet. Getting worse. "I'll be fine," he says, waving off Whitt's offer of healing, and we're dubious, but the meeting must continue.

We discuss the day's events: a problem student here, a Mundane substitute professor for herbology (really? what on earth made that seem like a good idea), an available grant for a research project that we're supposed to vote on that the Chancellor had mentioned at lunch. I half-listen to that part; I'm new and have no research projects even planned. Professor Valdez, the tall angular Ritual Magic professor, rattles off something about multiple simultaneous ritual castings. Professor Wallace says something about runes. Professor Whitt proposes something healing-related. 

My attention is drawn by a knock on the door. It's an elegant person with all the airs and presence of an Unsoiled wizard and a haughty Virginia Isle accent. She says she's from the alumni association, a Magischola grad, and has a letter for Professor Cantwil. It takes me a moment to realize that means it's a letter for me. I am confused; I have few people who would send me letters, anymore, isolated as I've become. 

It's addressed to “My Trusted Mentee", calligraphed in golden ink. My hand shakes as I break the seal. The meeting continues around me and I hear none of it; there is a wind-tunnel roaring in my ears, and the words on the page are a final shattering of trust. 

> _ My friend, _
> 
> _ I write to you from my allegedly safe haven. I have had a premonition that I will not be safe here for much longer. My hosts have been kind, treating me as a welcome guest, and the services they require in exchange for sanctuary are not the least bit arduous for one such as me. They show no sign of betrayal neither in their words or their thoughts, but I know in my mind that things are at a critical point of change.' _
> 
> _ Yet I have divined that I will have to flee once again — an attack here is imminent I fear — and I have few friends that I can trust. If you can find it in your heart, I’d appreciate some needed items in order to make my escape from the Provinces. If you could leave a bag with the following contents at the Gazebo of Calisaylá Crossing I could indiscreetly pick them up. _
> 
>   * _200 L$ or equivalence in barterable goods_
>   * _2 spare wands_
>   * _Gravitas potion_
>   * _Two vials of unicorn blood_
>   * _A glowspector_
>   * _Etienne Brule’s Compass_
>   * _A few non-detection charms, redundancy is good_
>   * _Some spare clothes, bulky is best_
>   * _Some fruit_
>   * _Crystals purified for ritual use_
>   * _Two arrowheads_
>   * _Sunglasses, preferably of the mirrored variety._
> 

> 
> _ I have one more stop at Fitzroy + Hathaway in The Penumbra, and by Saturday afternoon, if all goes well, I will be able to receive the drop. _
> 
> _ Your fugitive friend, _
> 
> _ Quincy Quintillian _

I stumble around the circle of tables, half-blind. I thrust the letter into Suddath's hands and sit heavily on the bench behind him. (I was wrong. I was wrong. I was _wrong_.)

_ (I can't trust anyone.) _

The alumni association representative waits, humming, twirling the cylindrical container she carries. Suddath looks at me with wide worried eyes, brow furrowed in seeming concern. "What d'ya want to do with this?"

I shake my head.  _ (I am lost.)  _ I don't know what is up or down anymore. "I don't know." 

"Want me to take care of it?"

Breathe in. Breathe out. "Yeah. First though..." 

I usher the alumni association representative out the door, saying I'll get back to her in a bit, could she go talk to that group of students over there about being a Magischola alum and the advantages a Magischola education brings? She is startlingly cooperative and oddly spacey; something twinges in the back of my mind, suspicion slowly stirring. I'm reminded of... of what?

(Figure it out later.)

"You were right," I tell Suddath, heavily, quietly. "Can't trust people. Shouldn't get close." 

He grunts, giving me a weighty look I can't quite read, and doesn't respond.

Faculty meeting. Okay. Suddath debriefs everyone. "Letter from Quintillion," he says. "Sez he's leaving the Isle. Sez there's trouble happenin'."

He reads some of the letter, and everyone shares their corroborating stories from student rumors and gathered suspicions. There are loudly announced theories on how and why we needed to bring the alum back in for questioning. And there's a group realization, all at once: Fitzroy. Fitzroy and Samson. They aren't here––there are dark rumors of rituals, their involvement in unsavory deeds, the mention of Fitzroy’s family store in Quintillian’s letter, a hint of substance to the first-year Astromancer vision of Virginia Isle's fiery fall...

"Do ya want it back?" Suddath asks me quietly, offering the letter. I stare at it for a frozen moment, then nod and take it in a numb hand, stuffing it into my bag. "Don't leave that nowhere," he warns. "Someone finds that, they won't unnerstand." 

I nod again. Of course. (He believes in me still. I don’t deserve this trust.)

I retrieve the alumnus messenger and invite her back into the faculty lounge. It's a light dance of conversation, poking around the edges of her story about receiving the letter. The tingle of suspicion grows, and my heart sinks. There's a gap in her memory. Her fogginess seems to deepen.

Back off the topic; her eyes are squinting in pain, she's rubbing her head, don't push too hard. Not yet. Steer the conversation safer.

"Just wanting to hear word of my old mentor Quincy," I say, lightly though it clenches iron around my chest. "I've taken his position as Mind Magic professor, after all."

"Oh!" She exclaims over this, expressing curiosity about mind magic. I offer to demonstrate; Professor Styles, one of the other former Marshals among the faculty and one of the Combat & Defense teachers, praises my skills beyond their merit, but I go with it nonetheless. She demurs, resists, then wavers. 

Professor Contreras, grizzled and scowling as always, has moved to stand behind her, and the Cryptozoology professor Castellaw too. Everyone's suspicion is up; it lays on the room like a heavy cloak.

But she agrees to a demonstration, to being the subject of a Mind Magic demonstration. Willingness makes it easier to get into her head.

"Contenta," I murmur with a wave of my mind-attuned wand, a soft calming to lower her defenses. "Khat-ka-ib, khat-ka-khaibit," I say, circling the wand at her mind and questing forward with my own, maintaining piercing eye contact. "Let's just go softly there, to when you got the message––"

She goes rigid and shaking. Shit. "Contenta," I say again, stilling my probe. Easy. Easy. Oh gods. I recognize these land-mines in her mind. I recognize this signature.

She gasps out stammered words of tragedy. The Isle's doom. Five simultaneous rituals to bring it down. One on Magischola grounds, the help of students. Slagerods, those dark artifacts of the wizard Jack Slager, power and potential and evil.

("Professor Valdez, is this possible?" someone asks Ash Valdez. The professor nods and explains obscure ritual magic theory; I am too focused on the mind I'm probing to follow the details.) 

"Who did this to you?” I ask, prying carefully, and her shaking intensifies. Professor Whitt is there to help stabilize her body. I am as subtle as I can be but these mind-wards are nasty, skillful, dangerous, and I know them. I  _ know _ them. 

(Some live in my own mind.)

"Quintillion," she gasps, and begins to collapse.

I slip the cylinder from her unresisting hand. "I'm pulling out of her mind," I say, the headache blooming red across my vision. "Khat ib sekhem," and I stagger too, the backlash of the mind-wards crashing through the link.

Ground it out. Focus. Breathe.

Something rattles from her coat. A wand. A blood-stained, bone-crafted wand.

_ Slagerod _ .

I hiss and kick it away to the rope circle that Ash has already set up. "Contenta, contenta," I say again, to the messenger and to myself. Her mind is stilling, settling. She blinks up at us. She remembers nothing.

She is okay. Okay enough, at least. I escort her out of the lounge and ask one of the students outside to take care of her, get her where she needs to go. (She's a victim of my mentor.  _ Damn _ .)

(Suddath was right all along. You can't trust anyone.)

Fitzroy and Samson. They're involved somehow. I sit with my back to the door and my wand out. Not a duelist like Fitzroy but I can take anyone out in a real fight. I tend to fight to subdue people, Marshal style. Keep them from leaving. Keep anyone else from coming in. My neurons are afire with readiness and waiting.

The cylindrical leather case and the slagerod are within Valdez's rope circle; xe is opening the container slowly, slowly. My senses are open as wide as they can go, touching the surface-feelings of every mind in the room (well, the ones not solidly shielded, and still I can get echoes sometimes from them). The container falls open and there's a silent mental shriek of pain––

"Slagerods––" and xe's unconscious, Valdez is being dragged from the circle, the young Professor Barber reaches in with a warded gloved hand to close the container. 

Whitt works on Valdez and asks me to check xir mind. Castellaw takes the guard seat (good, she's tough and quick, got to be to deal with cryptids like she does). I check Valdez: unconscious, pain-shocked, but fine. Will be fine.

"Five slagerods," someone breathes, like a prayer or a curse. I can almost feel the malevolent decay through the circle. We stare at the container as Valdez stirs.

And then movement outside catches my eye, the air of a stalking predator. A silver badge. Dark mirrored glasses. Striding towards the door.

Fuck.

"Hide the rods," I command. Everyone stares at me. "Marshal on the way. Marshal Hayes.” He wants reason to remove Chancellor Fortinbras, reason to have more influence in Magischola, and this would do it. Damn, damn, damn. “Hide the damn rods now!"

A flurry of motion. Wardings. Wallace draws a rune on Contreras' hand, killing the flesh. Barber lends their sigiled glove. Whitt reinforces Contreras' body with magic. Me to shield his mind.

"Can someone distract that Marshal?" I ask. Castellaw grins and ducks out the door, and the dark-robed Styles takes her place as guard.

I link my mind to Contreras (oh, that's interesting––a natural resonance between our minds––) and slip my shield over his, throwing all my skill and Will into it. He grabs the rods and climbs a ladder, hissing with the pain of it; I grit my teeth against the creeping toxin of soul-corruption oozing from the things. Up on the bookshelf and back down and his whole body shakes, his hand trembles, he hobbles to his seat and collapses into it, panting.

And shakes his head, decides to move the rods to behind and within a lectern. I don't quite hear the reason why but I pull myself together and reinforce his mind-shields again (might as well just maintain the link at this point) and as he's dropping them inside the lectern with a rattle, three of us hovering over and around him, the door opens.

It's Professor Castellaw, looking smug. 

"Marshal Hayes?" I ask.

"Gone," she says. Her mien shifts; her eyes go wide and innocent, her posture genial and flirtatious. "Oh, Marshal, we're having a faculty meeting, I can't have you interrupting; can I help you? We'll see you afterwards, perhaps? Thank you for understanding!" She drops the girlish demeanor, back to her usual warm-yet-tough no-nonsense cryptozoologist self, and shrugs. "So he just left."

I am impressed. "Nice." 

Through all this, Contreras is sitting again, grimacing through his thick beard as Professor Whitt restores the life to his hand, coaxing blood and life back through the deadened veins and nerves. I shield the link, wincing at the flood of pain. Whitt staggers, panting and sweating; not an easy thing to return life to a dead limb, it seems. (Affecting the body was never something I did well.)

There is a lull as the time-displaced 1800's Chancellor organizes Valdez, Wallace, and a few other professors at setting up a ritual to destroy the slagerods. She's dealt with these artifacts before, it turns out; that was her era. 

Samson and Fitzroy arrive––late, confused, and we are all afire with suspicion. Styles guards the door, this time to prevent them leaving. We probe and question and at last Fitzroy grates out a confession of guilt, of involvement in the plot to bring down the floating island province. The slagerods were part of this, a way to add power to the rituals so that even students could impact the Isle’s formidable defenses. 

(I never suspected her. I never thought she would do something like try to bring down Virginia Isle. Isn't it her home? How did I miss something like that?)

(You can't trust anyone.)

Professor Whitt calls me over to examine a dejected-looking Professor Samson. There's time missing in his memory, it seems. Maybe he and Fitzroy have been tampered with, maybe they aren't actually doing anything wrong. (I hope so. I  _ like _ Professor Fitzroy.) Whitt has a dream-artifact to build the link with Samson's mind. We connect up–– _ okan asópo _ , I murmur, the bonding-spell I’d taught my Mind Magic students earlier that day––and ease into Samson's mind until we find the start and the end of the gap, and Professor Whitt uses his dream-artifact to restore the contents of the missing time.

Fitzroy stands nearby, listening in as Samson describes what was missing. She shakes her head. "I remember all that," she says. "I think we just lost track of time, it wasn't actually a missing hour." 

A commotion at the ritual circle draws my attention. They are chanting, five people with one slagerod each, an attempt to destroy their power, and the rods are resisting their own destruction. Professor Wallace coughs up blood, doubling over and barely able to get the chant out. I am there in an instant, bolstering him, grasping the slagerod as well (and the creeping corruption of it threads into my skin like poison in my veins, the emotional resonance of all the soul-deaths it's caused echoing in my spirit and lashing my empathic senses). I grind the chant between my teeth, pushing my Will against the rod. The spell grows in intensity, fervor, volume; and there's the sense of a bursting bubble of pressure, a sense of release, and it is done. 

Wallace collapses. I sit heavily, clutching my head as if that'll keep the empathic feedback out; I am too, too open and I can't seem to pull my shields back together. I am spent. There are people in pain. Professor Whitt and Professor Coakley are sobbing together over––something, some shared sadness or some renewed connection, I can't sort it out. Samson is sitting against the wall looking blank. Fitzroy wears guilt like a funeral shroud. And. And. And.

(There's too much. Too much. Too much too much too  _ much _ )

I am outside the faculty lounge and sitting at the foot of a pillar without much recollection of how I got there. Pressing my hands to my head. Shaking. (Hold it together. Ground. Center. Get your shields up, damnit.)

Ziegler comes out to check on me. I shake my head. "I'll be fine." Nice of him but I need space away from all the thoughts and feelings and heartbeats so I can get myself together. (I am spent.)

I finally feel less scattered and less shattered. I hobble back into the faculty lounge as everyone is straightening up and gathering their stuff together (can't miss dinner after all, the schedule of the day rolls on). Professor Zeigler points to everyone, suddenly afire. "And you all laughed at me when I told you about my first year Astromancers! I TOLD YOU."

Rueful laughter all around, and assuring Zeigler that yes, the Divinations professor was right the whole time. "Hey," says a professor, "we're pretty damn awesome, we just destroyed five slagerods!" Gallows humor jokes as we stagger together to the dining hall. "And this is why we're faculty," someone else says, with deep satisfaction, "we're bad ass enough to handle this kind of shit."

"I left the Marshals to get away from this nonsense," I grumble, though the adrenaline still pumping through my veins means I feel alive for the first time since leaving the field. It's familiar, clearing my head and my sight, even as I suspect it's temporary. "Magischola was supposed to be  _ restful _ , damnit."

"Heh, the students are going to wonder what the hell happened when we limp in looking like death," a professor said. "Do we tell them?"

"Better not, at least not much, don't want to alarm anyone... the ritual can't work now after all, can it? Student magic would have worked with the additional power of the slagerods maybe, but now we've destroyed them..."

There's the casual camaraderie of people who've been through fire and battle together. It's new, a kind of cohesiveness that wasn't there before, what with the mixture of senior and junior faculty. The sense of wariness and suspicion isn't there anymore. I realize, through my exhaustion, that I'm smiling. I realize there's a new, unfamiliar warmth in my chest. 

It feels like belonging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this is difficult. It doesn't flow like a pre-planned story would, because it all unfolded in real-time, steered but unplanned. Some things are unresolved. Sometimes I glimpsed other peoples' stories and only touched them, never discovering how they turned out. A bit more like real life, in that way.


	5. Friday Evening

We walk on the trail to the dining hall, the warm bond of camaraderie and the black humor release after a shared crisis echoing through the sunlit woods. 

And then–– gods, it's so trivial, so small compared to everything else that has happened... 

Suddath bumps into me unexpectedly from behind. 

The shock of touch sends a lightning storm crashing through my every nerve. The soft shining bubble of belonging and aliveness bursts and I am frozen, heart racing, breath stopped in my chest. Eyes wide, staring.

Oh.  _ Oh _ . Right.

Hadn't realized. Hadn't noticed til now that the hair-trigger alertness of the field had returned.  _ Watch your back, Cantwil. Watch your surroundings.  _ Never know who might be looking to take out another silver badge. Shields up, senses out, eyes open. 

"Cantwil?" Suddath asks, something like concern in his voice and on his furrowed brow.

I have stopped still in my tracks and I am trembling. "Ah," I manage to force out. I shake myself like a dog wicking away water, trying to settle the adrenaline in my body. "Yeah. Fine. Sorry." Focus. Put on a professional front. In control. 

(it was supposed to be safe here)

(nowhere is safe)

I keep my back to the wall as much as possible in the dining hall. I'd gone lax, slipping into student carelessness. No more. Marshal vigilance is required even here.

(Can't relax anywhere. Can't  _ ever _ let down my guard.)

The long muscles between my shoulders cramp together with a slow itching tension. I don't have eyes on the back of my head but almost all my attention is behind me, and my wand is clenched in my hand even as I go to choose my meal. I am weary, stretched thin, out of juice; I don't know that I can defend myself if I'm attacked. (I'll fight with fist and tooth if I have to.) My nerves are on a hair trigger and I'm likely to blast some poor student if they jostle me unawares.

Best to avoid that.

I can't sit at the too-exposed high table with my back to hall or wide window. I  _ can't _ . I slide into a booth next to the faculty table, still shaking, tension filling every muscle.

Suddath and Contreras seem to have the same instinct, and join the safety of the corner booth.

Ah––there's the Chancellor––I have a deep, sudden flash of empathy. Thunderbird veteran during the Vampire Wars... that was an era when slagerods were more common. How many did he have to deal with? "I owe him a hug," I mutter, and head over to wait for him to finish his conversation.

Contreras pulls me aside first, though, his grizzled scowl a bit more intense than usual. "Fortinbras thinks the old chancellor's going to try something during announcements," he murmurs as we lean against a wall, nodding towards the colorfully dressed woman time-displaced from decades ago. She sits at the faculty table with her back to the window, facing the wall. "He wants us to keep an eye on her."

I straighten and set my jaw. "Got it." 

Fortinbras heads over to the middle of the hall with his pile of notes. Contreras takes up a position at the displaced chancellor's 4 o'clock, behind her and to her right, the heavy cane he uses as a wand held casually at the ready. I settle my wand at my hip, standing at her 8 o'clock, behind and to the left, the prospect of a potential fight flooding my body with adrenaline, sharpening my focus.

I love this feeling and hate it all at once. There's nothing that makes me feel more alive; it's like being back in the field, hunting down a suspect, my senses razor-sharp. My body's used to this level of arousal, heightened alertness; it's been my "normal" for eight years. I find myself grinning, teeth bared, predatory, almost feral. 

And yet it's not sustainable anymore. I hate it, knowing as soon as the crisis is over that there will be a crash into shaking, trembling, my bones rattling inside my skin. (Coward. Coward.  _ Weak _ .)

(Don't think about that now. Focus on the mission.)

Chancellor Fortinbras is reading aloud some silly student notes. He agrees to go to the ball with a couple students; I notice a feeling of a flash of disappointment somewhere in my gut. (Wouldn't have worked anyway, he's my boss, that would be weird.) 

(Who the hell am I going to go to the damn ball with, not a student for sure, not supposed to go alone... ugh. Think about it later.) 

I tune out the rest, putting all of my focus on the time-displaced chancellor.

She stands up with a bustling purpose. Straightens her jacket, settles out her skirts. She has a smile on her face and a bright eagerness in her eyes; she grips her wand at the ready. 

And then she turns, just a little, to get out of her seat and go around the table, and glimpses me to her left out of the corner of her eye, wand just barely in sight, my bearing all military Marshal.

She pauses. The smugness stutters in her mien.

She turns to the right, slowly, enough to see Contreras, solid and gruff with his cane held like a casual, quiet threat.

She stills. Her lips thin; her jaw sets. She slowly sits back into her seat and puts her wand away.

Contreras and I flash each other victorious smirks; the lingering connection from our work in the faculty lounge hums with satisfaction. 

We stay at our posts until the former chancellor bustles out of the hall, defeated.

(I hold off the crash with battle-readiness and Will. It has to wait until I'm alone. It has to wait until there are no witnesses.) 

(Can't break in front of students.)

(Hold on to the mirth and smugness of that victory. Just a little longer.)

. . . . . . . .

The drafting ceremony passes with little incident––except that Suddath isn't there. I am still all tension, despite having found a moment to shatter earlier, between the dining hall and the vaulted Great Hall. Pulled myself together with breath and willpower and now I'm in the spacey, foggy aftermath. And all the faculty are seated except for Suddath.

"Has anyone seen him?" I ask. No one has. The students file in, and at last the chancellor, and all the pomp and circumstance of music, procession, and reciting of traditions. Suddath is still absent.

"Would be just like him to walk in now," says Valdez, as the hall falls silent in preamble to the beginning of the drafting. Yet the great double doors of the hall stay closed.

I review my past interactions with the Forensics professor, worry bubbling within. There was that time at dinner just a bit ago, sitting with Suddath and Fitzroy when Suddath got a student's numerology reading of him, and Fitzroy read it aloud as we laughed because it seemed so off from the Suddath we knew. Suddath seemed to laugh too, but was it forced? Maybe he felt hurt, or dismissed, or mocked? 

I review each microexpression, each real or imagined whisper of empathic feedback. His every pause seems magnified beneath the lens of anxiety, until I am convinced––absolutely convinced––that the student's reading was something Suddath resonated with. That he felt devalued and hurt by our laughter, and only joined in to shield himself. That he is now going to close off even more than he already has. That I have missed something important about one of the only connections I have left in the world.

The white-haired twins, Freesia and Seraphina Lafayette, are called together to the sorting. Their newly-discovered father is in the row in front of me, the faculty all seated above the stage; Professor Wallace is out of his seat, an eager beaming smile on his face, his eyes alight, leaning forward to see them more clearly as they're sorted into their houses. He applauds with all the whole-hearted excitement of a child at Yule. 

(This moment is burned into my mind forever, highlighted more poignantly by the day to come.)

And finally the doors crack open, and Suddath sneaks in. Walks down the aisle, unnoticed by most everyone focused on the drafting. Takes a seat a couple rows behind anyone, sprawls out unceremoniously. Pulls out his flask. Unscrews it. Takes a long swig. 

I manage not to laugh, though relief and amusement bubbling together in a giddy combination make it hard. 

And afterwards, amidst the house photographs and the happy chaos of first years celebrating with their new housemates, I get a moment to check with Suddath and confirm that my anxieties are exactly as irrational as I suspected they were. 

. . . . . . . .

I am going to be late to the Maison du Bois initiation of the first years and I do not want to miss it. It's my house in so many ways, memories of "home" and "family" even if none of the people who made it so are still there, and so at the same time it intensifies the aching lostness of "you can never go home again". I am hurrying across the courtyard, trying to figure out if they've started yet, left the house yet––

"Professor Cantwil," calls the Chancellor. 

I shift from foot to foot, torn between duties. "Yessir?"

He motions me over, not quite looming, but his height in contrast to my own makes it hard not to get that impression. He leans in close, his resonant voice gone low and soft to prevent anyone from overhearing. "Do you think you can find a way to lure Quintillion to school grounds?"

I forget how to breathe, just for a moment, and my heart seems to stop beating. 

(Oh. Oh no. No. That's over with. Done. I can't.  _ I won't. _ I can avoid his schemes but I can't.... I can't betray him. Not like that.) 

I remember the letter with its gold calligraphy and its request for a drop-bag tomorrow afternoon.

"I can," I force out finally, and my heart struggles to find its rhythm again.

_ (remember the shattered mindscape of the person out of Avernus, too late, too late) _

but a plan is forming in my mind and I yearn for new family, acceptance. I long for this newfound camaraderie to grow, I yearn for Fortinbras' approval like I yearned for Quintillion's.

(they will all betray you too, you know)

(can't trust anyone, can't get close)

(weak idiot)

"The letter he sent mentioned something––I have a plan." The words come out of my mouth almost against my will. 

Guilt and betrayal taste like ashes on my tongue.

. . . . . . . .

The Du Bois initiation is both familiar and different, little alterations down through the years. It's an uncanny valley of memory, nostalgia, and disorientation. Echoes of my younger idealistic self, full of hope and wishes, audible in the student voices calling out the words of the ritual. I am torn between wanting to believe, yet knowing the truth of the world, remembering how little ideals matter in the face of hard reality.

The walk from common room to amphitheater is different when you aren't blindfolded, or hobbled, or impaired in any way except for within yourself. I have walked this way before, many times. I remember the steps in my own initiation, blindfolded, following the trail by touch and sound. I remember walking this way as a second year with a first-year mentee Cub of my own stumbling blindly behind. I remember walking this path as a third year after speaking the words as House President. And now, years later, a professor and house monitor, with nothing to do but walk and watch; a part of it all, yet so far apart at once. 

This is not home anymore, is it?

_ (is it my fate to lose everyone I ever call family) _

Torchlight flickers in the spell-circle. The two House Presidents, fierce fiery Magdalena on the Path of the Marshal, and gentler steadier Healer-path Amara––they speak and walk, cast the circle, call the words. It is yet again the same and different. I feel as though I am in two times at once, and somehow also outside of time.

“As Justice starts from within, we ask that each members of the house at this time pause, and evaluate changes you know you need to make. Pause to listen to what your soul is telling you. Étienne Brûlé stated it when he said 'Justice begins within your own truth.'"

My soul is a battleground between head and heart, past-self and now-self, ideals and experiences, desires and reality, wanting and hurting. Truth? I don't even know my own truth anymore. (Traveled in too many minds. Too many other feelings, other views. No one thinks they're evil. Not really.) How can there be justice in a world like this? 

(I can't trust myself, much less anyone else.)

Consider possible changes, the ritual asks. What changes could I possibly make? 

_ (To be stronger… _ )

(I am too weak to ever be strong. Too fractured. I can't just change that.)

I have been moving further towards not trusting, keep myself defended, could I continue that change? (And a part of me that is young and too, too alone pushes back against that thought. I am caught in a web of my own ambivalence, I am at a crossroads and paralyzed by choices.)

The ghost of Étienne Brûlé is as magnetic and arresting in his presence as I remember and more so. He stalks the circle, reminding us of Maison du Bois' original words––"Persevere and Excel"––exhorting us to live up to the standards of the house he founded. He calls up the Cubs one by one, challenges them with questions, asks us if this is a Bear. "Yes!" we roar back, and I forget the uncertainty in my spirit for just a moment.

The ritual ends with one last rallying speech.

“Strength grows through trial and torment, rooted in loyalty to each other, under the banner of blue and white. We are Maison du Bois, like the bear, vigilant and fierce. We will answer any slight with strength, loyalty, journey, justice, and truth, for together we're strong. We are Just!"

I answer with the rest of the bears of Maison Du Bois: "Always just." 

And––

I  _ want  _ to yell the words. I want to join in the emphatic cry, but I can't. They stick in my throat and sound unconvincing and uncertain to my ears. Hollow.  _ (Frail.) _

I can't see any of the house values in my life anymore. I'm no longer strong, I'm betraying my mentor, justice is an ideal I've failed too many times, and truth... I don't even know what is true or false anymore.

(I am not a Bear anymore. I’ve lost my way.)

. . . . . . . .

The Du Bois celebration is going strong back at the common room, and I slip out to the square.

I'd been confronted earlier by a petite first year student––Octavia, was it?––at dinner, when I had no patience for any additional bullshit. She tried to inquire about my relationship with Quintillion, ask if I'd heard from him; I gave her my best impassive Marshal stare, looming into her space, and she shrank back from me. She dropped the subject and fled.

But she is an inquisitive Astromancer and maybe she could be useful for this task. She was sorted into.... Dan Obeah, wasn't it? I find her in the Raven common room and pull her aside to an alcove; she is quavering like a leaf.  _ That’s odd _ . I hand her Quintillion's letter and explain the Chancellor's request.

"Do you think you can get all this?"

She considers as she copies down the list of Quintillian's requests. "Some of it, sure."

"I can get Etienne Brule's compass and a glow specter, but I don't have time to find it all," I say. "I'll ask another Astromancer from another house too. Don't talk about this to anyone, if too many minds are thinking about it then he might smell the trap."

I find the pale haired Astromancer with the southern drawl from my mind magic class in Calisaylá. She's open and enthusiastic about the hunt and already has a couple items on the list.

In the Du Bois common room, Magdalena and Amara don't even ask what I need the compass for. They trust me. (I am not worthy of this.) 

I stare at it for a moment; the enchanted dial that is supposed to point to one’s prey, whatever it may be, spins incoherently. It points nowhere, reflecting my own confusion and lack of focus.

(It would point true for Quintillion, I know it.) 

I slip it into my bag.

. . . . . . . .

The journey to the Path of the Marshal initiation is punctured by interruptions. There is a moment, walking with Castellaw through the forest, where a cluster of students says Laveau is doing a dark ritual. We give the standard Faculty response: well, of course; why don't you handle it, students, we have places to be and things to do. They look at us with trepidation and disbelief writ large on their faces, then run off to try to interrupt the ritual.

There is a scream, screaming, cries of pain. "An impenetrable shield, they have an impenetrable shield!" "They're torturing someone!" 

Castellaw and I share a look, then grip our wands and head over. There's a crashing in the woods as Contreras comes hobbling at great speed for a cane-wielding old wizard down the hill, and the alchemy professor Coakley follows hard at his heels despite the cinch of her corset. 

"Professors! Together!" Contreras orders, and the four of us fling our wills through the channel of our wands to hold down the shields. 

"We'll hold the shield," I bark at the students. "Go!" They nod and scurry past the barrier, chasing the ritualists and taking care of the hurting forest-creature Long-of-Limb. 

. . . . . . .

Later, a Du Bois student walks with me towards the Globe where the Marshal initiation will be, since I'm thoroughly lost. She’s the same student who chased down and confronted a Croatan student stealing from the common rooms on the first night; I assume she’s a Marshal and mention something to this effect

"No, I'm a Cryptozoology student," she says with a grin. "We're tougher than Marshals."

I have to laugh at the brazenness of the statement, and agree to an extent. Hm. Encourage the mind-focused Marshal students who are too soft for the job into Astromancy, and encourage the more physical combative ones into Cryptozoology? I hadn't considered it before but it makes sense as an option.

There are students racing every which way, trying to stop the rituals from bringing down Virginia Isle. I don't tell them that it's probably not possible at this point, with the slagerods destroyed and the ritual scrolls turned in to faculty by students with guilty consciences. Better safe than sorry, right? And it's good practice, a good learning experience.

I get lost a few more times (hopefully Styles is at the initiation site at least) and finally, finally make it to the courtyard with the waterfall globe.

. . . . . . . .

Styles is indeed there, half-immersed in a trance, and the Marshal students are all in the slack-faced state of a particularly familiar mind magic spell. He flicks a spell at me to bring me into the shared memory-scenario. 

The courtyard becomes a dingy room, a cell built for interrogation, wards embedded into every brick. In the center sits a disheveled prisoner bound into a dirty straightjacket, snarling at the questions posed to them. Four first year Marshal students sit in a row in front of four older students holding the space behind them like witnesses or guards. Styles stands as a prison sentry and I am walking up as a second sentry in the veil of memory.

The prisoner killed a mundane woman. A family. Was breaking into houses to steal food, objects. (To survive, they say. A necessity. Didn't want to kill her but she saw them.) Their story unfolds in jolts and gasps and growls under the pressure of interrogation. I watch, impassive, jaw set. 

(I remember the story of this one. Wasn't involved in it but I heard about it. Word travels in the Marshals. Bad business, this. The Mundanes didn't die painlessly. The prisoner's mind was a tangle of pain and rage and desperation.)

(They never think they're the bad guy. No one does.)

There is a student on the Path of the Marshal and in Du Bois, I remember him from my Mind Magic classes. He is hesitant. He asks questions and won't push further than that, won't cast spells of truth-finding or mind-forcing, though Styles pressures them all to get the truth, do what must be done.

(He's too gentle. Kind, even. Maybe I should encourage him to the Astromancers, or something outside the Marshal field. The field will eat him alive and break him to pieces. Though he resists authority's pressure well...)

There's a student in Calisaylá who is all fire and fury. They are shaking with rage at the prisoner and they say something like, "Feel what it's like, scum!" and fire an (illegal but it's a memory-trance so it doesn't count) pain-spell at the bound prisoner, who doubles over and convulses. My impassivity breaks with a furrowed frown before I wipe it back to blank, stern observing. One of the other students stops the Calisaylá first year after a breath of horrified staring. The Calisaylá student breathes hard, glaring at the prisoner, and mutters something before sitting down.

(I ask them later what the purpose was. "I wanted them to hurt," they said, "I wanted to punish them." Not good. Independent work for this one, or bounty hunting. Not enforcing law, not the silver badge for them, gods no. And maybe Whitt and I should check on the kid. They might need some counseling.)

There is a tall Du Bois student who stands with steely self-possessedness, asking her question and then using a crystal to enhance her mind magic and pull the truth out of the prisoner. They fight it but it works, and they tell her what they did, grinding the words out through clenched teeth. She releases the spell, her spine ramrod straight, and exchanges words with the prisoner on the rightness and wrongness of their actions before sitting down.

(She might be able to handle this. Of all of them she is the most promising. A little black-and-white ethically perhaps but has the steel and resilience in her. Unflinching yet not cold. Keep an eye on this one.)

Wasn't there another student? I can't remember and maybe it was just three people. I am all disjointed in my memories. There is a gray space in my mind where I thought another student was. Maybe it's just the filling-in of the memory-spell.

The sequence ends and the courtyard shivers back into being. Styles and I lecture, solemnly and briefly, about how this is the reality of the Path of the Marshal. How it gets worse than this, much worse. How they will have to do things that feel unjust or vile, how they will need to do what must be done and what the job demands. How they will make mistakes. How they might hurt or sentence the wrong person.

(I thought I would be always just, the hand of Justice.)

(remembering the state of their mind after Avernus)

(you may as well have killed them, it would have been kinder)

(how is Quintillian even coherent after all that)

The students file away solemnly. Styles and I nod to each other, veteran recognizing veteran, all the experiences in the field weighing heavily and unspoken in the air. (Don't need to talk about it when you've both been there. No one else can understand what it's like.)

I mention, briefly, the need for a memory alteration, sometime tomorrow. I’ll have to talk to Quintillian mind-to-mind and they’ll _ know  _ if I’m trying to deceive them; our connection is too deep. Styles warily, reluctantly agrees. He knows about unpleasant necessities.

My steps are heavy and weary as I head back to my room.


	6. Saturday, Daytime

It is Saturday and I am exhausted. 

I have tossed and turned much of the night. Memories of Quintillion, a confusing haze cast over the warm intensity of mentorship and tutoring in my time as a student, of the stern kindness I thought I'd experienced, of what I'd felt as firm paternal interest. Memories of all the minds I'd cracked open, crept into, feeling and experiencing their views, their lives, their motivating pain and fury. 

(The mage's haunted mind after Avernus, exonerated and released but too late, too late.) 

The previous day's lessons run through my head like a ritual casting, inscribing into my psyche like runes carved into stone: “Can't trust anyone. Can't trust yourself. Can't get close. Close off, keep yourself safe, keep everyone safe from you.”

I skip breakfast in favor of sleep, grabbing two sodas and an energy bar out of my room instead. I apply unguents and glamourie clumsily, more minimal than usual against the pressure of the clock and a bleary mind, and stumble to class.

"What was the point of yesterday's exercise?" I ask my students.

Awkward silence, and fumbled answers. An occasional correct response, or nearly so, though not in every class. Thought I'd explained it better. Apparently not.

"Connection, contact, and vulnerability," I say finally. "Knowing yourself. Knowing someone else. Why?"

More silence. More fumbled answers. (I need to work on my lecturing skills.)

"Mind magic, at least beyond the basic spells, requires connection. Connection requires vulnerability. Being able to touch the soft places inside yourself and make that contact with another person in order to delve into their mind and influence it. Knowing yourself thoroughly so you don't lose yourself in someone else's mind and so you can reduce the perceptual contamination, because mistakes _ will always happen _ ." 

(Happened to me, and I thought I knew better, thought I was practiced enough. Too hurting and angry and desperate and it clouded my judgment. Too extended and burnt out. Too eager for justice.)

(Such injustice from my hunger for justice. Foolish. Wrong.)

It doesn't hit me until the second class, as I repeat the words about connection and vulnerability, and talk about defenses as well. (Yesterday I stared at Magdalena Hayes as I said it, in my third class, because I suspect that is what blocks her progress in Mind Magic.) 

"If you cannot be vulnerable, if you cannot connect, you will never be able to engage in more advanced mind magic. If you have high, sharp defenses and are closed off, you won't be able to enter someone's mind without breaking their mind. And it's tricky, isn't it? Because as a Marshal you have to guard your mind too. You have to be able to defend yourself yet also be able to be open and reach out. It's hard. Impossible, sometimes..."

I falter, mid-explanation. My mind stutters.  _ (How hypocritical am I being right now?)  _ Mind magic, and especially skillful mind-breaking, is what I _ do _ . It's what I know, it's what I'm known for. 

"...but if you burn out," I struggle to find the words, force them past my suddenly tight throat, "if you close yourself off, then you'll be unable to enter another's mind without damage and harm, your mind magic will be deeply limited..."

There's a song about that, isn't there? Quintillion shared it with me once. (What happened to him? Could I have been deceived so badly by my craving for affection?)

> _ 'This only will I counsel you: that if you build a shell  
>  _ _ 'Of armor close about you, then you close yourself in hell.  
>  _ _ 'And if your heart should harden, then your gift will fade and die  
>  _ __ 'and all that you have lived and learned will then become a lie.'

Oh. Oh, gods. Damn it all. 

What am I going to do?

. . . . . . . . . .

It is my break and I'm determined to take a nap. I have several hours between my first two classes and my last class, but I don't want to head all the way back to my rooms. I wander campus, looking for an out-of-the-way place to nap for just a little while. 

Walking leads to mental wandering. There's been a building pressure of a worry, neglected and avoided until now, and I can't suppress it anymore. It's trivial really, and yet... not, at the same time.

Who the hell am I going to walk into the damn dance with tonight?

(Last minute much, Cantwil? Gah.)

The Chancellor said that faculty and students could go together and there weren't quite enough faculty votes to overturn that motion. I make a face like I've sucked on a lemon at that thought; it's the most sour disapproval I've ever felt within myself. I had argued ardently against the policy, said it was not okay for staff and students to date, the power differential confused and distorted consent. Chancellor Fortinbras made an argument about how consent violations were not okay and if he found out about any he'd take such severe action––but he missed my point. The power differential itself makes apparent consent an untrustworthy thing, and... 

...ah, hell. Nothing to do about it for now. Just frown disapprovingly at any fellow faculty who goes with or dates a student (I am all kinds of conflicted emotions about the Chancellor accepting the date requests but who would he walk in with otherwise? He has an unequal power dynamic with everyone), and... keep pushing the subject until it's changed.

So students are out.

I know it's just walking in with someone but... you're expected to dance, too, and I just. I don't want that kind of contact with someone I'm not comfortable with. I am guarded (and vulnerable to no one right now, I need to fix that, re-learn it, and yet last night's words are inscribed into my mind like ward-inscribed chains–– _ don't trust, don't trust, don't trust _ ) and I am wary. Yes there's that camaraderie from yesterday's trials and yet... still a distance.

Who do I have any kind of comfort with, any resonance and rapport?

Chancellor Fortinbras, and my mind skitters around the thought. Yes, I feel a connection with him, and I have that constant observing awareness of where he is whenever he's within sight that I get with people I am drawn to... but it almost feels like the paternal mentorship I had with Quintillion and––I can't trust that now. It's too raw and too fresh a wound to trust that with someone else. And besides, he has two dates. And besides that, he's my boss. 

Styles...? Possibly. Not because there's any sort of romantic connection there–– 

(not that there's any romantic connection with anyone, gods, when was the last time I dated? Back in Magischola, except for that one brief fling with that Marshal a few years ago and that was just post-crisis endorphins after that narrow escape we had, I'm pretty sure... would I even recognize romantic feelings if I had them at this point?)

––because there's not, but there's camaraderie, and understanding. Similar enough backgrounds, and I could see becoming friends beyond just colleagues.

Suddath... 

My mind shies from the thought, my heart does something strange and inexplicable. I shift my attention away, frowning. I finally find a comfortable enough looking bench in the shade of a tree, far from noisy students, and stretch out on it with my jacket as a pillow. 

(I need to practice connection and vulnerability with  _ someone _ . I can't shut myself off and still be who I am, still do my job.)

I remember what Suddath had said, about giving “at least one lick” for the students whereas he might not have given any before our work together. He'd come in when I was a green Marshal with my badge freshly minted and tutored me in forensics, because my investigation skills outside of mind magic needed work. 

(Who knew you couldn't use mind magic for everything? My younger self certainly didn't. I... may have been a bit hyper-specialized.) 

We developed... what I thought was a friendship. 

A rueful smile crosses my face. I had been so curious about him. Part of what made me a prodigy in mind breaking was my insatiable curiosity about people, my desire to see beneath the masks that everyone wears. I still have that, but it's... edged, now; suspicious rather than inquisitive. Don't trust their masks, everyone hides something, figure them out before they cause harm, figure out their weaknesses so you can defend against them.

But that wasn't me  _ then _ . I just wanted to know, and I cared, and I knew that hurt usually built masks and that shields created loneliness, and I hungered so badly for connection. I chipped away at Suddath the whole time––I must have been thoroughly obnoxious––and we even argued about the nature of people and their trustworthiness and the value of contact. 

I thought I got under the shell, a bit. Maybe I did. 

And we fell out of touch until now, and I have been so fearful of disappointing him, and scared of what he'll see and judge, and... and yet he hasn't, despite my hints and visible wounds, my stiff movements and field-forged armor. (Maybe he doesn't know yet, how damaged and unjust I am. How unworthy of trust or power or friendship.) 

(Or maybe it'll be okay.)

I draw in a deep shaky breath. "Okay," I say aloud to the tree and the clouded sky, "okay. I'll ask Suddath." 

I'll talk to him. Pull him aside to a quiet private corner. Tell him that I realized I was wrong, hurting, and scared when I said he was right about not trusting anyone and not getting close to anyone. I was wrong and I think he's wrong too. Connection is important, trust is a risk that's necessary to take sometimes, and I need to re-learn trust and connection if I've any hope of recovering myself. Tell him the person I think I can grow to trust and connect with is him, if he'll take that risk with me. Ask him to go to the dance.

Okay. 

_ Later _ . I'll track him down later. Definitely need a nap before a talk like that.

I drift to sleep in the lazy wet heat of the day.

I have the strangest, strangest dream of my tumultuous transformative second year at Magischola, Path of the Marshal student in Du Bois, but with a key difference: everyone around me, even the professors and my fellow bears, are people from my present day…


	7. 2007, Second Year, First Semester

**** I am nineteen years old. It's only the second day of the semester and the usual crew of Croatan Unsoiled are already singling out the mundane-born.  _ Again _ . 

The summer break was a welcome respite from petty student politics; all I had to focus on was helpin’ Professor Quintillian in their research, sitting with 'em for lessons, studyin' in my spare time. Have to keep my grades up, have to keep my scholarship. Most of the more stuck-up Unsoiled were off vacationing or back with their wizardly families, and the ones who stayed... well, they're usually better sorts. 

But now it's the new semester and the bullies are back at it and I’m so, so sick of it. 

Keep yer head down. Just focus on yer studies. Can't afford to piss off anyone with connections, can't afford to let yer grades drop, got to keep yer scholarship an' then have enough social capital to get a job after graduation...

(See, I can use big words. Not just a mundie farmkid hick. I hear them thinkin' it. Their shields are crap anyway.)

I am torn between stickin' up for the other mundane students and tryin' to avoid notice, blend in. Some Bear I'm turnin' out to be. My courage is worn and I got in trouble for prankin' last year and near lost my scholarship because I got too distracted and pissed off th' wrong people and... 

I just need to get through Magischola. Two more years. 

Ethics is the next class. Got out of Forensics again to study with an' help out Professor Quintillian but I'm supposed to make sure I go to ethics and theory. It's interesting sometimes at least. I'm scurrying over there, keepin' my head down, when...

"Professor Cantwil?" 

The other students are looking at me really strange. Crap. I glance down; did I get hit with a rune to turn my skin some strange color or give me horns or somethin' else ridiculous? And––wait, professor...?

"Um," I say, "what? I'm... not a professor. Obviously." I shake my robes and point at my nametag. "Sam Cantwil, second year, Path of the Marshal, Maison DuBois." Maybe they're first years and don't recognize professors yet. But no––they knew my name. What is going on?

They give each other confused looks, then seem to have a realization with a sudden dawning of awareness and a quiet "oh". An’ then they whisper amongst themselves.

My face burns, and I'm havin’ that slow sinking feeling of dread, and the pricklin’ of self-consciousness you feel when everyone's in on a joke except you, and you suspect yer the butt of it. 

But it happens again. "Professor Cantwil!" is called out, an’ this time the people who said it the first time pull the person aside and whisper with fierce seriousness. An’ again, an’ again.

I can't take it anymore. "Why do people keep callin’ me that??" My rural drawl slips into my speech with stress. I'd gotten better at groomin’ it out of my words and I just get more tense from it happenin' again. "I'm not a professor! I'm obviously not a professor! What's goin' on?!"

They try to explain somethin' about time travel, time slipping. They ask me what year it is and I'm  _ convinced _ I'm being pranked by the Croatan Unsoiled now. "It's 2007," I answer after some cajoling from my housemates (why don't I recognize them, what is happening, there can't be  _ that _ many first years). An’ they say it's 2016. 

I don't believe it. "Time travel ain't really possible, is it? An' anyway tempus magic is... yer not supposed to mess with that." I fidget. "I gotta get to class. Friggin' Croatans playin' a prank on me again. Dunno why they can't leave me alone." And one of the students trying to 'help' wears Croatan orange; I shy away from her and head to class.

I don't recognize the professor but that don't mean nothin'. New semester, sometimes it brings new profs. And I don't recognize my classmates which is weird 'cos I should. And they start talking about the various goings-on from last night, time magic an' summoning rituals an' necromancy an' rituals to bring down Virginia Isle or keep it up or... I've heard none of this stuff. I sit through as much class as I can handle, sinking into my seat, until I finally have to admit that maybe it's real. 

"Maybe I'm not bein' pranked," I mutter, and start to stand up. "Sorry professor, I–– I think I'm in the wrong year," and I skitter out of class.

The Chancellor stops me right outside the door.

He looks––older, a little? But only kind of. (Am I in trouble?) I've never really interacted with him. "What's your name again, student?" he asks, and I feel a kind of relief that he's not called me professor.

"Sam Cantwil," I manage, ducking my head and trying to disappear.

He nods, slowly. "And how are you with that wand, Sam?" 

"Ah." I wince. "I... well. I'm best with mind magic an' focus on that a lot, I'm spendin' a lot of time tutoring with Professor Quintillian..."

The Chancellor's visage seems to darken and he shakes his head. "That won't do. I expect to see you at Crossed Wands tonight for dueling practice."

I pale. "Dueling? Um. I don't. I have tutoring, I..."

"Dueling practice, student. It's important you get better with that wand if you're to be a Marshal." His stern look brooks no argument.

I wince again and nod. "Yessir, Chancellor. Sir. I'll be there." 

"Good!" He claps me on the shoulder and I grin weakly before heading across the green. I pull out my antler-handled wand and twisted it in my hands, looking at it as if for the first time. Huh. 

"Cantwil," says someone else––it's a professor. The ethics professor I think. Scraggly greying goatee. Kane? Professor Kane. He pulls me aside. "Look, I know it's confusing right now, but... you're here for a reason," he tells me, looking serious and feeling to my empathic senses a little raw, open and a little exposed. Huh. "My younger self showed up too, and... just, listen. It's important, what people tell you. What you experience here."

I am feelin’  _ really _ uncomfortable. "It's really strange," I say at last, in a kind of agreement. "I'll do my best. I kind of just want t'go home." 

. . . . 

It's lunch time and I'm headed to the dining hall. A couple Dan Obeah Astromancers peer closely at me, seem to realize I'm a student, and get that wide-eyed "aha" look on their faces. 

I'm starting to get real tired of that look. 

They introduce themselves as Octavia and Bee, asking if they can practice their Mind Magic homework on me. At this point I'm just going with whatever comes up. I've decided to treat the whole thing like some weird dream. 

"Sure, why not." I let my shields down, they cast a surface-thoughts spell and an inner-worries-revealing spell on me, I babble about Croatan Unsoiled bullies and confusion around the time-slip and thinking that maybe I'm actually in 2016 and how confused and stressed I am. 

I babble about how lonely I am, and how I sometimes feel like I have no one. How I haven't had a family since the Cinnabar Society took me from the farm at twelve years old, on account of my family being mundane, an' now I can't ever see 'em again. And...

The spell ends, I pull my painstakingly built mind-shields back up (Professor Quintillian says they'll eventually become second nature but they're not there yet and I get so easily overwhelmed by everyone's thoughts and feelings), and we make it to lunch.

It's a confusing riot of noise and not a single face I recognize except maybe some of the professors but they all look older. There's a tingle of magic across my mind and when I turn, a dark-garbed professor with a goatee and furrowed brow is staring at me penetratingly. 

Maybe I offended them somehow. Or maybe they disapprove of time displaced people. Or.

I back away slowly from the dining hall, the chaos, the intimidating professor in all black. "Uhm. I think. I should probably go to the Registrar's office."

And yet on the way back I run into the Chancellor again, and he says I should go to lunch, it'll be okay, and he steers me to the Maison DuBois table. "Remember," he says softly, "your house is your family, and you will always be able to come home to Magischola." There's a peculiar intensity in his gaze as he seems to stare straight past my shields, as if they're transparent glass instead of the reflective obsidian that I imagined them as. "No matter what happens. You always have a home here."

I draw in a deep breath. Home. Home and family. Is that possible? 

He tells the bears (of 2016... still strange to me) what's going on and one, a cryptozoologist named Devin, introduces me to a small creature-friend of theirs. I scratch it warily behind the ears and it seems to like it; I find myself relaxing a bit with the friendliness of the Maison DuBois students. I zone out a bit during announcements but manage to feel a bit okay, a bit safe, maybe a bit accepted. They're all very welcoming and they don't pry too much so I don't feel like I'm in any kind of spotlight, which lets me relax some.

Once lunch is over, I walk back with two third-years, a big Artificier the other bears just refer to as "Army" and a Cursebreaker named Adrian. They're very kind; Army is quiet, solid-feeling, like a grounding-post or a shield-wall, and with an air of amusement about him, whereas Adrian is warm and more talkative, inquisitive, with a sharp inquiring mind that at the same time doesn't feel intrusive. 

I ask them, as the Chancellor suggested, to tell me about my future self. They glance at each other as if weighing how much to say, but when I said the Chancellor told me to ask, they seem to relax. 

"Oh," says Adrian, "you're very confident, and have fantastic makeup."

I'm confused. I'm the least confident person I know. "...really?"

"Oh yes," and they talk about how I'm looked up to, and full of gilt and glamourie, and was a Marshal, and am kind of even intimidating, and I seem to have friends. And a professor, of course, of Mind Magic.

"Oh." I blink a few times, taking it all in. Huh. Could that be the kind of person I can become? I'm plain and shy and so very... mundane, right now. And lonely, isolated. But I can (and do, perhaps, if this isn't just a weird dream) become a  _ someone _ , and people don't bully me for being mundane-born, and I get confidence somehow. Perhaps if I just start... faking confidence? Doing things that require confidence? "Thank you. So much." I smile, shyly still. "You've been real kind."

We talk idly as they drop me off at the Registrar's office, and as they walk away, the world seems to lurch a bit––

––and there are people I recognize, walking towards me, blue ties and smiling faces. I'm back in my own time and my own place. (No one will believe me and I only half believe myself.) I smile and wave at my housemates, jogging over to join them. 

"We're gonna be late for Ethics, Sam! Hurry up!"

Oh, and I suppose I ought to keep that promise to go to Crossed Wands tonight…


	8. 2016, Saturday afternoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Character death, visceral descriptions of the internal experience of trauma.

I awake overheated and bleary and confused, sun streaming into my face. Was that a dream or a memory? My mind is full of cobwebs and I can't tell if there's been a change in time (did my younger self time-slip forward, is my memory now changed), or if my sanity is cracking even more, or what.

There's something.... something off. Something missing or distorted. I can't put my finger on it, I can only sense the shift in my own mind.

That dream is messing with my head.

I need to stop by my rooms. Find Octavia; she's supposed to have gathered that package Quintillian requested. My poor mentor… framed for abuse of Mind Magic and for blackmail. Of  _ course _ they were framed; they'd never do something like that. They were the one who taught me the ins and outs of mind magic, after all; they are like a parent to me, I trust them. How could I do otherwise?

I am so worried about Quintillian. They barely escaped Avernus and now they're having to flee their refuge on Virginia Isle. I still my thoughts and reach out along the connection that we have, teacher and student, mentor and protégé. I touch their mind-shields and knock; the gate of the link slides open and I am flooded with the love and trust and admiration I feel for my former mentor with whom I have spent so much time.

I bask a moment in the connection; it's such a rare and treasured experience. I feel their touch on my mind, skimming my thoughts as they so often have done. I feel the echo of their stress and strain, and my worry increases.

\-- _ Oh, Sam, _ \-- and their thought is a sigh of sadness and sympathy. -- _ My poor student. What has happened to you? _ \--

I flush, unable to hide. I know they see the scars and fractures and shattered pieces of my mindscape. (There is little that is more intimate than this mind to mind connection.) --I was not able to handle it,-- I send back, ashamed. --I fucked up.--

Sorrow and comfort. --You did your best. Magischola is a better place for you. You will do me proud as a professor.--

I respond like a flower turning towards the sun, an affection-starved dog getting its ears ruffled by its beloved person. --Are you okay? You feel stressed, and your letter...--

There is a pause, and the strained stressed feeling eases as their shields adjust. --I don't want to worry you, Sam. I do appreciate your help and trust. You are a blessing.-- Warmth flows down the link, and I soak in it, hungrier than I knew for the affection.

\--I'll have the package for you by 3pm at the Crossing,-- I think at Quintillian. --I won't be there, I have a class to teach and don't want to draw suspicion... The faculty don't trust me, they know of our closeness.--

A pause, and I feel Quincy sorting through the memories, the impressions of the different faculty, our interactions. I burn red with self-consciousness as they find my appreciation and warmth towards the Chancellor, my sense of camaraderie with Styles, my complicated care and yearning towards Suddath. 

There's a sharpness and more of that sorrow down the link. --Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry.  _ You can't trust them. _ Styles is only here as an investigator, and so is Suddath; they are gathering information on us both. And I suspect Fortinbras is the one who framed me.  _ Be careful and wary, Sam _ . Keep an eye on them and keep yourself shielded. They are only here for a job and you are not safe there. They got me into Avernus and I only barely escaped...-- the strain and weariness rings through the link again, --...and they must be looking into what you've done as a Marshal.--

Sadness hits me, and betrayal, and fear, and panic, and loss. I can't quite sort through the feelings and I am shaking with the storm of it. 

\--Shh, it's okay.-- Parental comfort from Quintillian, a mental embrace closer and more intimate than any physical one. --You just have to be careful. You're doing the right thing. We'll keep in touch, I'll help you navigate through it.  _ Just keep your eyes open, watch and observe, and earn their trust. _ \--

I am shaking still but I pull myself together with Quincy's help and solid support. --Okay. All right. I wish I could see you when you stop by. But it's best that I don't.--

\--Agreed. Thank you, Sam. You have done so well, and I am in your debt.--

I send back warmth and gratitude. --Never. This is only a small repayment of what I owe you.--

The link fades dormant and shielded again with a last acknowledgement, and I am at last arrived at my rooms.

Ms. Octavia is waiting outside with an armload of objects. She is preening and proud. "We got them all!"

I am impressed. "The whole list??" It wasn't an easy list, after all. I add Brulee's compass and a few other objects I'd gathered. "Great job!"

She dances from one foot to the other. "So how are you going to trap Quintillian?"

I smile slyly. "Oh, Ms. Octavia. I'm not betraying my mentor. But I  _ do _ appreciate your efforts."

Her eyes go wide and shocked. "But...! But... What?? I thought..."

I shake my head. "Ah, well.  _ Mutamemori _ ." The spell slides off my tongue and through my wand without difficulty, editing her memory with ease to forget the whole exchange and the delivery itself. Her face slackens and then she brightens. 

"Thank you, Octavia. That will be all. I believe you have a class to get to?"

"Of course, Professor! Bye!" She scampers off.

I manage to pass the package to another student to be delivered to Calisayla Crossing with the promise of house points once the task is complete, and then it's off to teach the third years.

I am stopped on the way there by the Chancellor, and Quintillian's warnings ring in my head, warring with the jolt of affection in my chest. I am running late but he sends Styles to teach in my stead (and I am increasingly anxious with the weight of Quintillian's warnings. Is this it? Have my mistakes as a Marshal been brought forward?).

"I need you to check this student's mind," the Chancellor says.

Oh. That's all. Okay. 

I am distracted and shaken but I focus as best I can and make eye contact with the student, sync my breath to theirs, build the link, and sift through their mind until I find the gap in their memory. It's amateurishly done, not filled in with a memory replacement, hence their realization that something was missing. I draw out the original memory, the student speaks the description of the scene, faltering a couple times, until the culprit is revealed.

The faces all around me are grim as I disconnect from the student and end the spell. I don't have time to ask too many questions, I have a class to get to and I am so so worried about Quintillian and trying to hide that in my own mind. The Chancellor says he doesn't need me anymore, and so I head to class and thank Styles, warily, for covering for me.

We talk ethics, vulnerability and connection, and the basic mechanics of the Will-affecting spells the third years learn. They are all weary and worn, stretched thin. I feel sorry for them and suggest we skip the exercise and just process their weekend experiences instead; they agree gratefully, and I hold space for the discussion and fears and stresses they're dealing with.

Class is over and I've got a faculty meeting to get to. I am still all pins and needles with worry about Quintillian, walking with my mind elsewhere. (I hope they made it in and out safely. I don't want to lose them. I don't want them to go back to Avernus.) I resist the urge to feel down the link, not wanting to distract them or alert anyone on campus. 

And then there is Styles, all dark intensity and furrowed brow. "Quintillian's here," he barks at me.

"What?"  _ Shit _ . Distract him. Delay him.  _ Something _ . "My mentor?"

An impatient nod. "Yes! We have to go confront him, he's on the bridge!"

"Why would we do that?" I try to project innocence and trust. 

Styles stares at me, and then curses. "Don't have time for this." He fires off a spell at me before I can respond (he always was a better duelist) and my mind floods with 

––the faculty lounge, slagerods, Quintillian's damning letter

––the Chancellor's request that I lure Quintillian back to campus 

––Fitzroy's brother, his death, Quintillian's involvement, her rage and sorrow

––betrayal betrayal betrayal I was betrayed by Quintillian and now I'm betraying them––

...and I am on my knees, on the ground, clutching my head, gasping, reeling. I had my parental trusted mentor back for a time, and the affection and the care and… and it’s all a lie, can't trust anyone, can't, can't...

_ it hurts, it hurts, it hurts _

(I am alone)

(I thought they cared about me, was I just another tool to be used)

(I am lost)

and there is a student babbling something, waves of panic and fear and grief and pain roiling from them, "we need a marshal, and a counselor, Professor Wallace, he's dead,"

they're asking Styles and Styles is torn between going after Quintillian (oh gods do I want them captured or do I want them to escape, I can't, I don't even know anymore) and attending the call for a Marshal and 

duty calls, the need of others

(do what must be done)

I pull myself together with a sobbing breath. 

I shove the feelings and grief and loss and pain down, down, stuff them below the surface of my being and shove my mind-shields over the feelings. I pull myself inwards. I pull on the mask of glamourie and silver badges. 

Stay professional. Fall apart later. (I remember this skill, at least.)

"You go after Quintillian," I say, rising with an effort. "I can't be there, Styles. I  _ can’t. _ " There's a break in my voice. I steel myself, breathe, reassert my mask. "I'm more the counselor than you are. I'll go to Wallace."

He still seems torn but he nods, and he dashes off to Calisaylá Crossing.

"Show me," I order the student, putting all the rest from my mind. Focus on the crisis at hand. People need you to be strong. You need to be strong.

(Hold it together just a bit longer.)

. . . . . . . . . . 

I am a glass sculpture of myself fractured through and through, held together only by bonds of Will and the tension of my own body. I can feel the fragility inside, as if one wrong movement will send me flying into a hundred thousand pieces that not even the most skilled Artificier will be able to put together again.

My every breath is measured to my footsteps. To the agitated movement of the student I am following at a jog towards the classrooms.

"Professor Wallace is dead, he came into the ritual classroom wanting to see his daughters, he died, we need a Marshal to examine the scene, it wasn't anyone's fault, he wanted to die..."

The student is fracturing too, and has less practice at dealing with crisis than I. Their need, their distress calls to the pattern within me of Marshal, Caretaker, Calm-in-a-Crisis. The Marshal who investigates a crime scene and has to be equal parts observant and calm and reassuring. The Marshal who delves into the mind of victims and witnesses and perpetrators alike, who must soothe them enough to contain their pain and trauma and still get something useful out of them. 

My Marshal training settles about me like a carapace, holding my fractures together. I feel the strain at my heart, my core, the stress of entering back into this role, the adrenaline-fire of crisis that will crash hard later, the dwindling resources of my Will... and I ignore it. 

(Time enough to break later. Hold it together. You can do this.)

We climb the stairs to the fourth floor. Another student interrupts us on the stair, eyes wide and worried. "Professor, please, he wanted to die," they say quietly for my ears alone, "it was a suicide, not a murder, they tried to help him..."

Static buzzes in my mind. My shields are as fractured as my heart and the class of first-year Astromancers and Healers milling about outside the ritual magic classroom are so, so loud, all reverberating trauma and confusion and grief, fear and hurt and guilt, regret and blood and the sour smell of sickness, sorrow and anger, a storm of emotion.

It's all the emotional reverberation of the aftermath of a crime scene.

I breathe deep and remind myself of my Marshal rigidity, the carapace of my training, as the glass sculpture of myself shudders with the resonance of memory, the creeping shivering fog of flashback trying to rise up from my midbrain. 

(No. No.  _ No. _ Keep it together.)

"I understand," I tell the student, all firm gentleness, putting as much reassurance I can into my voice. "Thank you."

Someone points me around the corner towards Professor Ash Valdez; they are sitting on the stair talking to a student, holding space with all the grounded centered stillness of an excellent ritual magician. I am interrupted on the way there by Octavia, pale-faced with stress––

––oh. "Oh," I say, "right." 

I don't have time for niceties. I flick a spell at her to remove the memory block and she staggers, blinks, starts to look just a bit outraged. I brush past her. No time; I'll explain it all to her later. For now, though, the matter at hand is far more urgent.

Valdez leads me into the classroom. 

The air is filled with incense and the sharp coppery scent of blood. The sour smells of infection, illness, sweat, fear. The tingle of magic built up through ritual. Acrid smoke, lingering. The beginnings of the earthy decay of death.

Professor Ray Wallace lies spread-eagle in the midst of a ritual circle, skin going gray, blood trickling from his mouth and beginning to dry. His daughters sit, ashen and staring into nothing, against the far wall.

I examine the body, the scene. My wand flicks out, tasting the energy and the emotions, the lingering thoughts and feelings around Wallace's body. (Fear/despair/pain. Plea. Mercy. Relief, release.) A vial with the residue of a glittering liquid I recognize as unicorn blood. I hover over a set of crystals that resonate with Wallace's spirit. I stalk the circle, eyes half-shut, sensing with my mind as much as my physical senses.

I breathe shallowly now, trying not to inhale much of the all-too-familiar aroma. (Smell is the sharpest memory association. The strongest, the quickest. Fight the flashback fog. Fight it. Focus.) But deep breathing is better for calming, regulating. But. But.

Focus.

"Contenta," I mutter to myself.

I walk to the white-haired twins, Wallace's daughters. I pull up a chair, and I feel the tumultuous waves roiling off them. It calls to the remaining resources in me and the training; I find myself centered, focused on them, my presence wide and still and calm, containing them, containing us. The quiet observing self in the back of my mind tracks their expressions and posture and movements and breath. Tracks my own state, calculatingly and calmly. I stretch my senses over and into them, settling like a blanket over their minds, matching my breath to theirs.

"I'm sorry to do this," I say, my gaze soft and deep, projecting compassion and concern into the lines of my face and the tilt of my body, "but I need to see the memory through your eyes. Are you willing?"

They nod. I ask for permission to make physical contact, cast the spell of connecting and the spell of mind-reading, and place a hand on each of them. I close my eyes and ease into their minds as gently as I can.

––Wallace stumbling in half-carried by a group of students, coughing, seizing, bleeding, dying

––a flurry of motion, ritual circles and organization and glyph-construction, and they/we are naming/Naming their/our father for the ritual

––a Path of the Marshal student taking Father's last will and testament

––he wants to die, he says he wants to die, he is dying

––he says healing will hurt him and the greater the healing the greater the hurt and he wants to die

––she/I goes for the healers, Professor Valdez called for a master healer, she/I returns with third-year Healers, Hamilton and others (but he wants to die)

––vial of unicorn blood but the healers won't even touch it (unicorn blood? ultimate healing...) "Don't use it!" shouted by the healers, frantic, trying everything to save the life of someone who doesn't want to be saved

––cursebreaking ritual and Octavia's leading and everyone's trying so hard and it doesn't work, so many collapse from the effort of it, the curse is only held off a little longer

––(he wants to die and he is in so so so much pain)

––Professor Valdez places the unicorn blood next to her/me where she/I sits next to Father's head, the healers are trying to save him and he's refusing it all

––(give him the unicorn blood, release him, he deserves it/does he deserve it?) (a storm of conflicting emotions)

––he accepts the unicorn blood, she/I gave it to him, we knew what it would do, he knew what it would do, he drinks it and he is dying and he is dead and someone is closing his eyes and he is dead

––"It was not your fault," Professor Valdez is saying, "you did all that you could do," but it is my fault but he wanted it but––

" _ Fin _ ," I gasp, breaking the connection.

I close my eyes and breathe deep to calm, but the stench of death and magic and fear fills my nose and that damn trauma-fog keeps creeping in. (No, no, no. Focus. You have two people who need care.)

"It was not your fault," I echo Valdez's words. "You will not get consequences from this if I have anything to say about it, and I'm the certifying Marshal here." I meet their eyes intently, trying to project my commitment and certainty. They nod.

I hold the space. I ask how they are feeling, what they are feeling. I reflect their feelings back to them with soft words, finding the emotion beneath their stumbling speech. I draw the grief out with presence and hold it, let it drop into me like I am a deep deep well that can hold it all and for the moment, I can. I fill the space with listening and empathy, I join them in their pain and name it, I coax them into naming guilt/pain/fear/stress/anger/sadness/hurt, I validate and reassure. Tears well up in their eyes and they seem to release the feelings.

I stay rooted deep and present, connected, and I hold the space.

I escort them from the room and remind them to see the Chancellor afterwards. All of them who feel the need for it. I remind everyone outside to support one another, seek out their support, take it slow. Talk to their people. Talk to me. Talk to Professor Whitt. Talk to their house ghosts. 

Don't do this alone.

_ (I am alone.) _

Professor Valdez pulls me back into the ritual room to share xir experience. Everyone is so worried that the twins will get in trouble for this. (They won't. I will protect them. I will make sure of it.) I notice vaguely, in the back of my mind, that Valdez seems tense and fracturing too, but I am too distracted with worry for the students and calculating my own resources (how can I protect them all, how can I take care of them all) and I don't pry, I don't investigate, I miss the unspoken request to hold space for Valdez. (Guilt. Regret.) 

We're faculty, we can handle ourselves. Right? We are strong and competent. (We handle it alone.) The students are the ones who need help.

(Have to keep it together.)

Next is the faculty meeting and then stop by the Globe, see if the Chancellor needs me to help with some kind of group grief counseling. I'm the best suited for it apart from Professor Whitt. I can do it. (I can hold it together. Keep holding space.) 

Okay. Okay. I can do this.

I walk out of the classroom and down the stairs and nearly run into Hamilton. Green tie, third year Healer, Dan Obeah house president I think. Right? Yes.

He wears a thousand-yard stare and the paleness of someone in shock and I know that expression. I know it. I've seen it on the face of many a Marshal after a crime scene, or after someone under their protection has died, or after a comrade's loss in the field. 

_ I've _ worn that expression. 

My well is going dry and the fractures in me are widening but Hamilton's need summons that carapace of training again and calls up the last drops of empathy in me. I stretch my senses out to him and I pry gently at his feelings.

"I... that was the first patient I've ever lost," he says through the fog of shock.

I exhale slow and long, a heavy sigh of understanding. I pry a little more, and reflect back validation and listening, reassurance, not your fault, you did the best you could. 

I hold the space.

And after a time he starts to walk away, distantly, falling deeper into the fog. Oh no, that will not do. "Promise me you'll talk to your supports, your people," I say, voice firm. He waves, noncommittally, and I pursue. "Hamilton."

"Okay, yeah," spoken vaguely. It’s the best I get from him, and then he walks down the tree-shadowed path.

My well runs dry at last and I am empty and

and I am not shattered yet

because I am too empty to shatter. 

I feel it. I feel the edges of it. I wrap my arms around myself and the pain echoes through every fibre of my being. There's the tingling of flashback filling the seams of my fractures with fog. There's the ache of loss and loneliness threading through my core. Every motion hurts and I am a gaping wound, an open wound walking through the campus that once was home and safety.

(was it all a lie, all of it, not just Quintillian but the whole thing)

and

I cannot protect them all

I wander hollow-eyed through the grounds, watching the students pass by, realizing that every single one of them might become broken like me. That it's not just the Marshals who are at risk. All those sweet first-year Astromancers who I thought were safe, they just experienced a death despite everything they tried, and they're so sensitive to the reverberations thereof. All the Healers like Hamilton, patching people up and seeing torn bodies and healing through the screams of pain and sometimes, often, losing the people they tried to save, or even giving them the release they beg for. Probably even the Cursebreakers, Cryptozoologists, Artificiers, though I don't yet know the pain and stress of their fields.

I can't protect any of them.

I can't save them.

I can't.

(They are going to hurt and lose and break and die and I can't do a thing about it.)

I am yearning for the break now, and I can't reach it. My eyes are dry and I am an open wound and I can't break. I am consumed with pain and I can't cry. I am breaking and yet still walking and every time I pass a student I hide the hollowness and despair, I mask it, and everyone is too wrapped up in their own pains to notice mine anyway.

(I hold the space even now. I don't know how to do anything else.)

(There is no one to hold it for me.)

. . . . . . . . . . 

I am walking to the faculty lounge in a fugue when I am stopped by a student. They ask me if Suddath is okay and I am suddenly confused and concerned all at once.

"What? Why wouldn't he be?"

Well, they say, they saw him being yelled at by a custodian woman. He had a broom and looked cowed, cringing. She was berating him, scolding and verbally abusing, and he was just taking it. Didn't seem like him but it  _ was _ him.

Worry rises in me, filling out the fractured places. "That isn't like him at all," I say slowly. "Thank you, I'll check on him."

Octavia is waiting in a huff outside the faculty lounge as I hasten towards the faculty meeting. She has two other students with her and her small frame is full of fierceness and outrage. 

(I can't deal with this right now.)

(I  _ must _ deal with this right now.)

I summon a thin facade of confidence and sternness, and I stride over. "Stop," I say before she can demand answers. "Sit down. I will explain."

Her mouth clicks shut and she sits, then seems perturbed that she followed my direction so readily. She starts to get up, the fire rising in her mien, and I give her a Look until she sits again, unsteady.

Good to know the Marshal authoritative intimidation still works. Nice that I still have it even when I'm falling apart at the seams.

I explain curtly and briefly: needing to lure Quintillian here. Needing to not arouse their suspicion with my mind, as I was connected to them and had to send them a mental message. (I resist again checking the link. I am torn.) Getting mind-altered by Styles and needing to adjust Octavia's mind too. And now we're both back to normal and Quintillian is on Calisaylá Crossing being confronted by Fitzroy and a bunch of students and maybe Styles too.

Her mouth rounds into an "o". "So that's why you returned my memory...?"

"Yes, it wouldn't make any sense for me to do if I was actually helping Quintillian, would it?" My voice is brittle glass, all bitterness and sharpness, and my heart hurts. 

(I am still a walking wound.)

I leave them there to sort out their thoughts and gossip. I have a faculty meeting to get to.

. . . . . .

Suddath isn't there. I am preoccupied the entire time, watching out the window for Suddath when I'm not staring into nothing and reverberating with the onset of something like shock and the fog of dissociation. I fade in and out between worried watchfulness and an exhausted fugue. 

Suddath shows at last and looks like he's okay, and the worry subsides a bit into confused concern. No time to check now. (I still need to ask them to the dance but when am I going to have time? It'll be too late soon and it seems like such a trivial concern now, maybe it doesn't matter, and now I think I was maybe wrong about trying to trust, not after Quintillian...)

But my thoughts are interrupted and my plans thwarted by Professor Coakley asking if anyone still needs a date to the ball, and to raise their hands if so, trying to get everyone paired and sorted.

Shit.

"Suddath, walk in with me?" I say in a burst before anyone else can speak.

He blinks and seems a bit taken aback. "Uh. I mean, I'd be up fer that but Contreras already asked."

I glance behind him where a young, time-slipped Professor Contreras snores through the meeting. (Didn't consider Contreras, but... that resonance… I'd be okay with walking in with him.) "We can have multiple dates; I could go with the two of you."

Suddath shrugs. "Sure. Don't imagine he'd mind."

I relax back into my seat. Well that's done. I feel a vague disappointment that I didn't ask in the way I'd planned but I don't know how I feel about the words I'd imagined anymore, the sentiment of it. That was before this fractured-glass feeling and before I thought I had Quintillian back and before my mental conversation with them and before the fresh experience of betrayal. I don't know how I'm going to learn vulnerability and connection again. 

How can I trust any kind of connection after that? 

And then the faculty meeting is over. I leave in a daze for dinner and somewhere on the journey to the dining hall I hear it. 

"Quintillian is dead." 

My world shudders and time seems to stop. I can't feel my breath or my heart.

The link... I quest down it with my mind. It is dormant but not dead.

(Did they become a ghost? Does a link persist through death?)

\--Quintillian. Quincy. (Oh gods.)  _ Quintillian _ .-- I send the call down our connection and it hits the shielded door of their end. That isn't abnormal though. That happens sometimes. They don't always answer.

The door doesn't open and there is no response.

I send a battering of grief and guilt and fury and regret and longing. I pry at the shielded door and I plead at it.  _ \--Open up, damn you. Damnit Quintillian. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry don't be dead you two faced bastard I love you I'm sorry-- _

There is no response.

I stagger the rest of the way to the dining hall as one shell-shocked. I don't see the path, I don't see anything though my eyes are open. All my attention is on that closed door at the end of the link and I am shaking and blank-faced and

and no one notices a thing.

Or if they do they assume it's because of Professor Wallace's death and yes that hit me hard but not in the way they think. 

(I am alone.)

A student on the Path of the Marshal in Laveau purple and a strained stoic held-together look on her freckled features comes up to me on my way to the faculty table. "I was there," she tells me. Círo, that's it; Eris Círo, second year, and by the steely feel of her she chose to stay on the Path of the Marshal with eyes open to what it holds.

(I've got to hand it to Lakay Laveau... That house doesn't do wide-eyed idealism.)

I close my eyes and exhale, slowly. "Tell me. Please. How did it happen?"

She tells me without salaciousness or glee, almost business-like but with a hint of compassion in her martial bearing. She tells me how Professor Fitzroy gathered them up, people from a variety of paths, and they hastened to the Crossing with only a brief explanation. How they waited at the baited trap for Quintillian for what seemed like an age and finally Quincy showed, stalking the bridge like a lean hungry wolf. How they confronted Quintillian with ritual circle and shield, bonded magics against Quintillian's formidable mind as Quincy tested their circle and caught their gazes and stared them down, stared into their souls. 

How the circle was tested too many times and Quintillian seemed about to break through and Laveau student Xander Stone felled Quincy with a killing spell. How Eris and many of the rest didn't want Quintillian to die, but he wasn’t going to cooperate, and what else could be done?

(And at least Quintillian won't be in Avernus, ever again...)

The grief washes over me, and a hint of confusion too. (Quintillian was better than that.  _ Stronger _ than that. Felled by student magic when Quincy is one of the top wizards in mind magic...? Maybe Avernus took its toll. But... I can barely believe it.)

The link is not dead, yet the door at the end will not open. I knock again and nothing. The connection isn’t dead, but it is dormant. 

There is a sinking in my gut and a prickle of dread and hope and fear and… and I can't follow that thread of thought right now. I can't, I shouldn't.

And the grief rises up anew. "Maybe they wanted to die," I say, half to myself. I straighten and meet the student's gaze. I breathe again and nod, as soldier-like as she. "Thank you. I... That means a great deal to me."

She looks a bit raw and a bit wounded herself, still. My heart goes out to her. 

(I should have been there. I should have been the one to do it. Instead, these students bore the deed and I... I was not strong enough.)

"Was that your first death?" 

A wordless nod, and her jaw tightens.

Oh, gods. "There were no good choices there," I tell her, quiet and firm all at once, holding her gaze with mine, intently. "You did the best you could. You made hard choices just like you'll have to in the field."

She nods again. I know my eyes are wet as the grief and pain surges in me and I can see her tearing up too, for her own reasons I can only guess at. We talk softly for a little longer, and I express further gratitude, and

a student brushes past behind me and places a lingering hand on my back and my whole skin jolts and my fractured spirit shudders nearly apart

"Sorry for your loss," said briefly and then the student is gone (green in their hair but a purple tie and sweeping past)

I am gasping; I excuse myself to press my back to the dining hall wall. (Every fucking time I get unexpectedly touched. Can't leave my back exposed, damnit. Not anywhere.) I am shaking and the tears are spilling over and someone is going to notice. I can't bear it if anyone notices. I'm ducking my head and hiding my face

and I realize all of a sudden that the student didn't mean my mentor, they meant Wallace, the cocky blustering professor I barely knew and didn't particularly like, whose children I'd counseled and whose death-scene I'd observed with a clinical investigative eye.

Who would give condolences for a traitor? Who would grieve for a person who manipulated and blackmailed, twisted at minds with magic, who controlled professors and students alike, who escaped Avernus and sent slagerods to the school? Who would expect such a person to be grieved, to be a loss?

(But Quintillian was what I knew of family and what I had for connection and what I felt of parental love and was all I had of that, maybe it was all false but it hurts and I long for their approval and affection still and I betrayed them and I don't want them to be dead and I...)

Oh gods.

I am responsible for Quintillian's death

they're dead because of me

because they trusted me 

_ (I can't even trust myself) _

I excuse myself and stagger to the faculty table. To the booth against the wall that I've grown accustomed to, my back pressed safely against the wall. Suddath is there and I struggle for the distraction––

"...are you okay, Suddath?"

"Yeah, why?" He's admiring a hat that his sister sent him, a ridiculous twenty-gallon Baja affair coated in feathers and turquoise. 

"A student said you were being yelled at by a custodian, that you were cowering and not seeming yourself, you had a broom..."

He looks at me and seems to wince, or shrink. "Ah, hell." Turns out it was indeed his younger self, time-slipped forward as so many have been, the ley lines still in the process of stabilizing after the work the students had all done on Friday night. He is trying to shrug it off, but I find myself softening further towards him. 

That must have been one of the origins of his distance and armor, perhaps. An early wound.

But now Suddath's uncomfortable and he’s redirecting the focus on to me, and Fitzroy is weary from the confrontation with Quintillian. Suddenly I am crying silent tears and telling them how it hurts to grieve the loss of my mentor, but Quincy  _ was _ my mentor, and I cared about them and thought they cared about me and... and...

...the tears end just as quickly as they began. I haven't quite yet shattered and I feel the straining need of it. (If I don't break I will be frozen forever.) I am blank and hollow again.

I need food still. I need to get up and fuel my body as much as I don't want to. I stand and excuse myself, all shaky awkwardness now.

I encounter Contreras on the way back, present-Contreras rather than time-slipped young-Contreras, and I pull at his attention. "Hey, so, I asked Suddath if I could come to the dance and he said it's fine if I come with both of you, is that okay?"

Contreras eyes me and a grin quirks at his the corners of his eyes and twitches at his prodigious beard. "Sure, if I can be in the middle."

The table breaks out into laughter and I find it washing over me in a wave of hysteria, that space between laughter and tears when you've pushed yourself too far. Contreras seems confused, then turns red and clarifies that he meant if he could walk in the center of us, between us for processing in, not... not...

It's enough. I can stave off the breaking for a little longer.

I hold it together long enough to get back to my room.

The door closes behind me and I click the lock, activate the warding-sigil, and I am alone in the quiet of the tower.

There is no one to see me break and there is no one I need to hold space for and there is nothing preventing me from falling apart as I so, so need to do.

I wait.

I breathe.

Nothing happens.

I am hollow and empty inside, and I am an open wound that has bled out, and the fractured blown-glass of my spirit is somehow, impossibly, staying together, held by the rigid Marshal carapace and filled with trauma-fog.

I am frozen.

I lean against the wall and close my eyes. A sliver of fear creeps in (I will be frozen forever and I will be paralyzed by this and I will be unable to access my mind magic). I need to break. I see the fractures of myself and it is too too much, I can't move, can't feel. I prod at the edges of myself and there is nothing.

Well. Well then.

Out comes the wand. I pry along the link I share with Quintillian, eyes closed, using the wand to strengthen and hone my senses. I feel around the edges of the door at the end of the connection. I quest around it with my senses, probing for weak spots. I knock. I push. I shove with all my strength at it.

Something snaps inside me with the effort and I am panting, I am reddening with strain. The emotions start to rush up through the cracks in my heart and batter against the carapace of my Marshal mask. Anger and hurt and grief and guilt, rage and sorrow and betrayal, loss and love and pain, and all the feelings that I've stuffed down past the surface in order to get through the last couple days. All of it rises up like floodwater until it's a torrent; I am channeling it down the link to splash against the locked-shut door of Quintillian's end.

\--how could you do this, why, why would you use people like that, how--

\--I thought you cared about me, I trusted you, I loved/love you like a parent, you are my only family--

\--was I just a tool or did you care and I don't know, I can't trust my own heart or mind anymore, it's led me wrong too many times--

\--don't be dead oh gods don't be dead please please please--

\--I hate you I am so furious I could choke you blast you curse you, I want to hurt you like you hurt me--

\--oh gods but I didn't want to kill you I killed you and I wasn't even brave enough to be there for it, it's my fault my fault my fault I didn't want to betray you I just wanted, I thought, I--

the pressure builds and

there is a shuddering all along the link and

a sensation of tearing bursting ripping and

the connection snaps.

I collapse through the closet door that I have pushed askew on its hinges, gasping, the pain pouring from me like high-pressure water through a burst pipe. My fists are red and bruised from pounding; my body has enacted the motions my psyche performed in the aether. My throat is raw with screams, shouts, I must have been saying it all aloud at some point…

I am curled into a ball in the cool darkness of the closet and I am shattering into pieces, the carapace has burst apart from the pressure, I am drowning

grasping for the shards of the link, the last pieces I have of Quintillian, of my mentor, and there is only a tenuous thread left. I destroyed  _ this, _ too, I...

\--please please please  _ I’m sorry  _ please don’t be gone--

and I am too ungrounded to salvage it. It’s just a single small fragile thread rather than the robust throughway it was before. I shield it on my end to keep from overloading it again with my clumsiness and pain and I am crying, stuffing my hands over my mouth to keep from drawing too much attention and wailing, I can’t think or see

I am uncontained and I am falling apart

and there is no one to hold me together

nothing

I reach out blindly through tears and gasping sobs, and pull the closet door shut. The walls are close about me, the darkness covers me like a blanket. I am hidden and as contained as I can be on my own. I press against the walls with my back and feet and hands. I curl into the corner and rock back and forth, shaking, heaving with grief and raw gaping loneliness.

I feel as though I’m breaking apart in the hidden shadows for an age, a whole lifetime, until finally I run dry. My mind is devoid of words and I am floating in my own skin. I am drained and exhausted and I am empty at last.

My body contains the essence of me broken into pieces and ground to dust, burned to ash and potentiality, an empty vessel to be rebuilt into… into what?

I open the door into the golden light of evening streaming into the room, into my eyes, burning away the quiet comforting dark. I breathe deep and pull myself to my feet.

The day is not yet over. There’s a ball to get ready for, and I’ve made commitments. The schedule of Magischola waits for no one and continues regardless.

Shower. Wash the red from my eyes. Glamourie and unguents. Formal clothing, waistcoat corset and spats. Cravat, shoes, peacock-patterned coat. And hasten to the ball, slipping into line just in time, just as they’re finalizing the order of procession.


	9. Saturday night: Ball

Suddath, Contreras, and I all compliment one another on our outfits. The twenty-gallon hat Suddath got from his sister is still ridiculous but somehow works, perched atop his head to complement the ascot and accented shirt. Contreras is more traditional in a dark suit and waistcoat, leaning on his cane. 

Suddath takes one look at me and hands over his flask; I take a swig, and the herbal taste hits with its battery-acid aftertaste that forces me into my body and into the here-and-now.

(Thank gods.)

The procession is long, but there’s a lightheartedness to it that starts to fill the empty hollow spaces inside me. Contreras loops his arm through Suddath’s and his other arm through mine, and he seems quite pleased with himself, preening and cracking wry jokes to ease the stiffness probably evident in both Suddath and myself.

The contact is strange to me after so long apart. The stiff and competent Marshal doesn’t touch people, and the Marshals in the field are all military professionalism. And I haven’t had much more than a fling since Magischola, and no friends with whom I could get contact. I don’t know how to handle it at first; I am rigid and thoroughly awkward. Prolonged touch is… not something I know how to accept anymore. Touch in general is unsafe, is a threat. I am intensely, intensely aware of the spaces where my body contacts Contreras’s, the pressure and the heat. I am unsure whether to drink it in or dissociate from it, and eventually I just shift my focus to the people around me and the stream of commentary from Contreras’s dry wit.

We walk the circle the students have formed in the ballroom, and we wait for the Chancellor’s announcements to end. He encourages everyone to dance at least for the first dance, a waltz. 

Contreras pulls us all onto the floor, and seems aghast when Suddath says, “I don’t know how to do this fancy kinda dancin’,” and I nod, admitting that I don’t really know it either.

“I’ll show you,” Contreras says. “And we’re going to figure out how to waltz with three people!”

We are awkward, alternating hand to waist and hand to shoulder, a triangle––three people for a three-step dance, that’s something at least. We keep bursting into laughter, and talking ourselves through it. “Step towards Cantwil, step towards Contreras, step towards Suddath… Cantwil, Contreras, Suddath… Cantwil, Contreras, Suddath…” Dancing in a triangle of movement on the floor to the three-beat waltz. We find the rhythm finally, though we have to periodically repeat the chant to remind ourselves when one of us - usually Suddath or I, Contreras is much more graceful in his body - loses it again.

“We’re at least doing better than them,” I say, nodding over to a group of five students swaying in a circle more than dancing, a veritable clump that rotates and bumps into the people around them.

By the end of it, we’re quite pleased with ourselves for adapting the dance to a group of three, overheated from the warm enclosed room and the exertion, and breathless with laughter from the ridiculousness of it all. We flee to the next room for drinks and air, claiming a seat sheltered by the wall and close to the exit (Suddath’s paranoia, my Marshal training, and did Contreras seem to have an alertness about his surroundings? I need to study him more fully), hiding a flask under Suddath’s prodigious hat.

“Oh,” says Contreras, sitting upright suddenly, “I need to claim the Chancellor, he owes me a dance.”

I follow, curious about the casually intimate dynamic between the two of them that I have glimpsed from time to time. (It is easier to focus on others than on myself; I have lost my center and my ground, I am floating through the evening to the whim and whimsy of others.) I watch as he cuts into the Chancellor’s current dance and bows with poised grace; as they enter into a shared space between the two of them and whirl about the dance floor.

I feel like I am intruding by watching, somehow, even though there are so many people about. And anyway, I’ve left Suddath alone.

Back to the table, and eventually Contreras returns, wiping his brow and smiling. He seems more relaxed than I’ve seen him all weekend, and he steals another sip of Suddath’s flask. Then a round in front of the photographer, a series of shots with a variety of people, and

(it is so loud, even though all the feelings spiraling through the room are happy buzzing ones and the occasional spike of stress, it’s still so much, and I am so raw, my shields are torn paper now)

“Faculty meeting?” Contreras asks, voice heavy with implication that what he actually means is to retreat to the faculty lounge for drinks and quiet and no students.

I smile, grateful and amused. “Of course. Very important. Lots of, um, points to tally. And grading to do. Alcohol points, and all that.”

I pass the word along with a wink-nudge-smile to the rest of the faculty, at least all the ones I see in the area, and we slip out into the quiet of the night.

It is all quiet merriment in the faculty lounge, and exhaustion, and professionalism dropped in favor of vulgar language and venting. Someone finally, finally finds a corkscrew (but House Croatan still loses four points for making it inaccessible during the previous day’s faculty drinking spree in the lounge). I drift on tired emptiness, a whisper of belonging, and the buzz of Thunderbird apple whiskey.

We return at last for the final announcements and rewarding of the house cup. I can barely focus through the noise, both psychic and verbal. The speeches of happy house presidents. Maison Du Bois does okay, a solid third, not great but better than we’d expected. Casa Calisaylá earns second and then no one is surprised by Dan Obeah’s win of the house cup.

Their speech, though.

Hamilton, the wounded Healer, speaking to a new tradition, hand up with five fingers for five houses, a Magischola chant of “We are one!” responded to by everyone in a thunderous unity: 

“WE ARE MAGI!”

And for a moment, in the hugs and sounds and cheering, in upraised hands pressed together palm to palm, New World Magischola once again feels… just a little bit, like a whisper of memory or hope or possibility… just a little bit like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The transition from the previous chapter is not much of one. Unfortunately this is how it happened. There's a lot unresolved for Cantwil. We'll see how the Yule event and the second semester go...

**Author's Note:**

> The title (of the series and this story) is a reference to Mercedes Lackey's "Healer's Dilemma" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uMIO7IZcVI - referenced in the story.
> 
> I am going to the Magischola 2016 Yule event, and the 2017 Second Semester event, both times as Sam Cantwil. There will be future installments.


End file.
